PRF BLOG | Psychical Research Foundation

Dec 24, 2019
4 min

An Auditory Phantom Experience at Christmas

Although they don't seem to be as common as visual sightings, phantom sounds do tend to make up a fair proportion of the kinds of apparitional experiences that people report having; surveys of reported apparition cases tend to indicate that auditory experiences comprise roughly one-third of the reports [1-2]. Some of the sounds seem to represent percussive noises (such as knocks, bangs, thuds, crashes, footsteps, and objects heard to be shifting or falling over) that have no

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An Intuitively-Sensed Holiday Homecoming?

Bryan Williams

Nov 28, 2019
4 min

An Intuitively-Sensed Holiday Homecoming?

For many people, one of the joys of Thanksgiving comes in being with friends and family who've traveled from afar to celebrate the holiday with them. These homecomings are often awaited in anxious anticipation, although sometimes, they pleasantly arise out of the blue when a certain loved one arrives home unexpectedly. In some of these instances, could some of these surprise homecoming arrivals be conveyed slightly ahead of time through an intuitive sense? Parapsychologist

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A Reported Psychic Vision During the American Revolution

Bryan Williams

Jul 4, 2019
4 min

A Reported Psychic Vision During the American Revolution

Among the conflicts that were influential in turning the course of the American Revolutionary War (which serves as the historical background for the Independence Day - aka., "4th of July" - holiday commonly observed in the United States) were the two Battles of Saratoga, which took place in September and October of 1777, and ultimately ended in the surrender of General John Burgoyne's large British force that was invading the northern colony of New York. One of the casualties

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A Reported Precognitive Dream of D-Day, 75 Years Ago

Bryan Williams

Jun 6, 2019
2 min

A Reported Precognitive Dream of D-Day, 75 Years Ago

Case surveys tend to indicate that many instances of ostensible precognition (i.e., psychic perception of the future) come in the form of dreams, and that they often reflect events that occur in a negative light (such as accidents, illnesses, or even deaths). [1-3] One illustrative example, which comes from the extensive case collection gathered by parapsychologist Louisa Rhine [4], is a dream that one man had in relation to a historic event which took place 75 years ago toda

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Bryan Williams

May 26, 2019
3 min

An Intuitively-Driven Cemetery Visit?

Occasionally there are moments when people tell of having felt a sudden urge, impulse, or desire coming on, without any clear reason or purpose behind it. While many of these feelings seem to amount to little more than imagination, there have been certain instances in which they've seemingly been found to correspond to a particularly meaningful occurrence. One suggestive example comes from a case found in Phantasms of the Living [1], which reportedly took place approximately

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Spontaneous Sightings of a Mother's Spectral Figure

Bryan Williams

May 12, 2019
5 min

Spontaneous Sightings of a Mother's Spectral Figure

In 1922 - a little over three decades after psychical researchers Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers, and Frank Podmore had initially published their classic two-volume anthology Phantasms of the Living [1] - there appeared a second notable anthology of reported psychic experiences which had been diligently compiled and examined by another psychical researcher, Eleanor Sidgwick. [2] Meant be a sequel of sorts to the work of Gurney and his colleagues, Mrs. Sidgwick's anthology cont

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I've Got My Mind on You: Pondering Thought Correspondences for Easter

Bryan Williams

Apr 20, 2019
5 min

I've Got My Mind on You: Pondering Thought Correspondences for Easter

People occasionally tell of moments in which they find themselves suddenly having a particular thought or image come to mind, and then later learn that someone else they know had had that same (or a related) thought/image on their mind at roughly the same moment. While chance coincidence may account for a number of these seeming thought correspondences, there are certain instances where the correspondence appears to be so close that one begins to wonder about telepathy possib

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Another Touching Moment: A Second Tender Tactile Apparitional Experience

Bryan Williams

Feb 14, 2019
5 min

Another Touching Moment: A Second Tender Tactile Apparitional Experience

There have been a number of documented instances in which people say that they'd seen the spectral figure of a certain person suddenly appear before them at a time when that person had been in an accident, was suffering a serious illness, or was facing imminent threat of death. [e.g., 1-2] Occasionally these crisis apparitional experiences, as they are called, occur between two people who are romantically involved, and the following account, which comes from the classic two-v

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Remembering Muriel Gold Roll (1927 - 2018)

Bryan Williams

Jan 27, 2019
6 min

Remembering Muriel Gold Roll (1927 - 2018)

The PRF has had a number of delightful individuals serve on its research staff over the years, and in this blog entry, we wish to take a moment to fondly remember one of them that we lost late last year: Muriel Gold Roll, who passed away on October 5, 2018, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Aside from being a devoted mother and grandmother, Muriel was known for having earned a number of academic achievements in her long life, and for her volunteer service at the Nasher Museum o

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Bryan Williams

Dec 21, 2018
10 min

The Ghost (Story) of Christmas Past

Typically in our modern Western culture, Halloween has been considered the haunting time of the year - the time that has been most often reserved for telling tales of a ghostly sort. But it may come as a bit of a surprise for some people to learn that this wasn't always the case, and that at one time, Christmas was seen as a seasonal occasion for sharing spooky spectral stories, as well! This particular Yuletide practice of yesteryear recently received attention once again

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Collective Consciousness During the "World's Largest Ghost Hunt?"

Bryan Williams

Sep 20, 2018
3 min

Collective Consciousness During the "World's Largest Ghost Hunt?"

Random number generators (or RNGs, for short) are small electronic circuits designed to produce random sequences of binary numbers (i.e., random strings of "1"s & "0"s) based on the activity of natural physical processes such as radioactive decay and the noise produced by streams of electrons, which are inherently unpredictable. Since the 1960s, they have been frequently used in parapsychological experiments to determine whether humans are capable of influencing physical matt

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Bryan Williams

Sep 3, 2018
4 min

An Auditory Phantom Harbinger?

While they are typically thought of as being seen, there are times in which apparitions have reportedly been heard, as well: Reports of phantom voices, footsteps, and other sounds mimicking human activity do tend to surface on an occasional basis, mostly in haunt cases but also in other kinds of spontaneous spectral encounters. And indeed, surveys tend to indicate that auditory experiences are the next most frequently reported form of spontaneous apparitional encounter, behin

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A Touching Moment: Revisiting a Tender Tactile Apparitional Experience

Bryan Williams

Feb 14, 2018
4 min

A Touching Moment: Revisiting a Tender Tactile Apparitional Experience

Although they don't seem to be very common, there have been limited occasions in which people reported apparitional experiences where they'd felt the sensation of being touched by something immaterial or unseen. Some survey findings suggest that around 13 - 15% of apparition cases contain such reports of feeling phantom sensations of touch [1-2], while other surveys have found them to be reported much less often (e.g., around 2% [3]). Among the earliest reported cases of this

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The Clock Stops for Thee: On a Seemingly Anomalous Physical Effect Reported Around the Time of Death

Bryan Williams

Nov 22, 2017
7 min

The Clock Stops for Thee: On a Seemingly Anomalous Physical Effect Reported Around the Time of Death

A number of tales exist in folklore of moments in which people have noticed clocks mysteriously stopping around the time that a loved one has died. Seemingly real-life accounts of these apparent "death coincidences" have occasionally turned up in case collections of spontaneous psychic experiences, including the extensive collection compiled by the late Louisa Rhine. [1,2] An illustrative example case comes from a young girl in New England, which appeared in Chapter 14 of Rhi

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The Man (or Woman) of My Dreams: Precognitive Experiences Relating to that Special Someone

Bryan Williams

Feb 14, 2017
6 min

The Man (or Woman) of My Dreams: Precognitive Experiences Relating to that Special Someone

Dreams which seem to foretell the occurrence of future events have been reported throughout the course of human history, with some reports reaching as far back as the ancient Greek and Roman eras. [1] Case surveys seem to indicate that these and other kinds of precognitive experiences are most often about emotionally traumatic events such as death, illness, and crisis situations (as seen in our previous blog post on premonitions relating to the Pearl Harbor attack). But a sma

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A Ghostly Visit on New Year's Eve, 90 Years Ago

Bryan Williams

Dec 31, 2016
4 min

A Ghostly Visit on New Year's Eve, 90 Years Ago

Often times, haunted houses are readily thought of as the setting for encounters of a ghostly nature. But apparitions are also experienced in a number of other situations, as well. One of them occurs when a person is facing a crisis brought on by an illness, an accident, or the approach of death. The experience described below, which is an example of the latter circumstance, reportedly occurred on New Year's Eve exactly 90 years ago today. It had been sent to Louisa Rhine at

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A Christmas Visit from a Lost Love: On the Apparitional Experiences of Widows & Widowers

Bryan Williams

Dec 24, 2016
5 min

A Christmas Visit from a Lost Love: On the Apparitional Experiences of Widows & Widowers

Many of the encounters that people have with apparitions (or ghosts) of the dead take place over a wide range of time, from days, to months, to even years after a person has passed. Often they spontaneously occur when one least expects them to - even at holiday time. Such was the case for a bereaved widow who reported seeing the ghostly figure of her recently deceased husband, as described in her account given in the collection of apparitional experiences gathered by British

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Foreseeing Disaster: Premonitions of Pearl Harbor

Bryan Williams

Dec 7, 2016
8 min

Foreseeing Disaster: Premonitions of Pearl Harbor

Many people have talked about moments when something didn't feel right - moments when they found themselves saying, "I have a bad feeling about this." Often these moments have ended up amounting to very little, but in certain instances, might they have actually represented subtle intuitions of dreadful events to come? Consider, for example, the following case narrative, which comes from the extensive collection of spontaneous psychic experiences gathered by Louisa Rhine at th

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Looking Back at the Ghostly Case of "The Scratched Cheek"

Bryan Williams

Oct 31, 2016
7 min

Looking Back at the Ghostly Case of "The Scratched Cheek"

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Revisiting the "Cradle of ESP" (A Mother's Day Blog)

Bryan Williams

May 8, 2016
1 min

Revisiting the "Cradle of ESP" (A Mother's Day Blog)

Mothers naturally feel a deep loving bond with their children from the very start. It may be so strong that at times, the mother may "feel lost" when separated from her child, even for a brief time. Some mothers have even talked about certain moments in which they "just knew" that their baby was crying, and came to find out that that was indeed the case. Is there really anything to these reported maternal experiences? Is the innate bond between mother and child so strong that

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