It gives me great pleasure and pride to announce that the ParaMOOC series for 2023 is back from a two year hiatus due to Covid and the heartbreaking loss of one of its founders and coordinator Dr. Carlos S. Alvarado. Parapsychology Foundation has been a staunch supporter of this free Massive Open Online Course since 2015. The team has regrouped and is set to continue in the memory and “spirit” of Carlos’ academic life long career. Dr. Nancy L. Zingrone takes up once again the baton as moderator, with Natasha Chisdes providing administrative support and Bryan Williams, Research Director of Psychical Research Foundation, coordinating the roster of esteemed presenters.
I will let Bryan speak to this providing his own words on ParaMOOC’s background and details of the series with the very important sign up details. I urge you all to partake in the fruit of their labor as I am sure you will not be disappointed as they shed much needed light on Apparitions, Hauntings and Poltergeists.
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“Here is some background information about the upcoming Parapsychology: Research and Education massively-open online course (casually referred to as the “ParaMOOC,” for short):
Alleged encounters with apparitions, hauntings, and poltergeists have long been a part of human culture, with some of the earliest known accounts reaching all the way back to ancient times. Among them is a tale given by Lucian of Samosata (c. 125 – 180 AD), a rhetorician of the Roman period, who once told of a man witnessing the spectral figure of his wife twenty days after she died. The figure was said to be unrestful because the man had neglected to fully honor his wife by burning all of clothing upon her funeral pyre – in particular, he’d overlooked one of her gold slippers, which was accidentally misplaced after it had fallen behind a chest. The man later found slipper in the very place where the figure said it was hidden from sight, and he duly burned it the next day (Collison-Morley, 1912, pp. 54 – 55).
Are ghost stories like this one merely the product of human imagination and superstition? Or could there be something to them that’s seriously worth considering? Arguably, there may be some reason for thinking the latter, as it seems that even today, a small but fairly sizable proportion of the general public continues to report having such encounters: According to a recent YouGov poll, 19% of Americans have reportedly seen a ghost, 25% say they’ve lived in a haunted house, and 22% of them claim to have seen an object move without explanation (Orth, 2022).
And as several parapsychologists and psychical researchers have pointed out throughout the years, encounters with such phenomena seem too numerous to ignore, and it remains quite possible that we still have much to learn from them. For instance, the eminent 19th century psychologist and psychical researcher William James (1897) once opined that among the “veins of ore for future working” in the field were:
Ghosts…and disturbances in haunted houses. These, whatever else may be said of them at present, are not without bearing on the common scientific presumption [that psychic phenomena do not exist]. Of course, one is impressed by such narratives after the mode in which one’s impressibility is fashioned. I am not ashamed to confess that in my own case, although my judgment remains deliberately suspended, my feeling towards the way in which the phenomena of physical mediumship should be approached has received from ghost and disturbance-stories a distinctly charitable lurch. Science may keep saying: “Such things are simply impossible”; yet, so long as the stories multiply in different lands, and so few are positively explained away, it is bad method to ignore them. (p. 7)
The late Martin Ebon (1968), who served as the Parapsychology Foundation’s administrative secretary from 1953 to 1965, would also point out many years later:
…there have simply been too many accounts of ghostly apparitions to deny the reality of at least these impressions. What they mean, and how they happen, remains a mystery – but a fairly well explored mystery that throws some light on the human personality and its oddities. (p. 11)
And still later, in a panel discussion on the topic, parapsychologist Michaeleen Maher (1992) expressed a similar view:
Although…seminal studies have been valuable, it is evident that research on ghosts (poltergeists, hauntings, and apparitions) has as yet exposed little of the vast, uncharted domain of death and possible immortality. Far from resolving the mystery, we have hardly begun to penetrate its outer shell. It would be unwise to “give up the ghost” at this unsatisfying stage of our knowledge. An honest inquiry into death and its aftermath is both bold and necessary for the true progress of humankind. (p. 138)
This raises the question: Where do we currently stand regarding our knowledge of these phenomena? That will be the thematic focus of the latest ParaMOOC, which is being revitalized in 2023 after a two-year hiatus stemming from the unexpected passing of one of its founders and chief organizers, Dr. Carlos S. Alvarado (1955 – 2021).
With the continuing support of the Parapsychology Foundation, this free online course will take place throughout the month of March (as a way to honor Dr. Alvarado, being his birth month), and will feature presentations given by a number of international researchers and scholars within the field of parapsychology who’ve done work of this topic. And to help make the course more interesting and accessible to a general audience, a few ghost hunters from the paranormal enthusiast community have been invited to be among the faculty for this year’s ParaMOOC.
Conducted via Zoom, the live course line-up for ParaMOOC 2023 will be as follows:
Fatima Machado, clinical psychologist with the InterPsi–Laboratory of Psychosocial Studies at the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Psychology, will present “Poltergeists in Brazil: Case Studies, Theoretical Approaches and Their Implications” on Wednesday, March 1st.
Gerhard Mayer, researcher at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health (IGPP) in Germany and director of the Gesellschaft für Anomalistik (Society for Anomalistics), will present “Reflections on Single Case Studies Using the Example of Two Case Investigations” on Friday, March 3rd.
Gerald Solfvin, psychologist and parapsychologist with the Center for Indic Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, will present “Spontaneous Cases of the RSPK Type: The AECKO Approach” on Tuesday, March 7th.
Hideyuki Kokubo, researcher at the Institute for Informatics of Consciousness and a part-time lecturer at the School of Information and Communication at Meiji University in Japan, will present “Methodology of a Case Study on a Poltergeist Incident” on Wednesday, March 8th.
Beth Darlington, United Kingdom-based independent paranormal investigator and founder of the Access Paranormal website, will present “PAEs – Possible Alternative Explanations When Investigating Paranormal Phenomena” on Saturday, March 11th.
Historian & transdisciplinary researcher Christopher Laursen, and Canadian investigator & author Susan Demeter, will jointly present “Making Sense of Ourselves in Studies of Ghostly Phenomena” on Sunday, March 12th.
Psychologist Terry Olesen and psychic investigator Robb Tilley, with the Australian Institute of Parapsychological Research (AIPR), will jointly present “Apparitions and Ghost Experiences: An Introduction – Parts 1 & 2” on Tuesday, March 14th.
Timothy Harte, Illinois-based mental health clinician and field investigator of hauntings, will present “MESA: Multi-Energy Sensor Array” [Tentative Title] on Wednesday, March 15th.
Loyd Auerbach, well-known parapsychological field investigator and author, will be presenting on Friday, March 17th, with topic to be determined.
Allison Jornlin, Wisconsin-based researcher and writer with AmericanGhostWalks.com, will present “The Hidden Ghost Hunter: Remembering Catherine Crowe” on Sunday, March 19th.
Pamela Rae Heath, California-based physician and parapsychologist, will present “How Mind-Matter Interaction May Play a Role in Creating Place Memory” on Monday, March 20th.
Beth Hedva, co-chair of the Canadian Institute for Transpersonal and Integrative Sciences and a licensed psychologist and teacher, will present “Doing Something About It: Clinical Parapsychology” on Friday, March 24th.
Rosemarie Pilkington, New York-based parapsychologist, teacher, lecturer, and author, will present “Gilbert Roller and the Bindelof Case” on Saturday, March 25th.
Ann Winsper, psychologist and researcher with Para.Science in the United Kingdom, will present “Creating the Dead: How Do Auditory Perception, Paranormal Belief and Individual Differences Affect the Interpretation of Alleged Electronic Voice Phenomena?” on Tuesday, March 28th.
Bryan Williams, research director of the Psychical Research Foundation, will present “Making a Case for Considering Place Memory” on Tuesday, March 21st, and “Seeking Spectral Insight” [Tentative Title] on Thursday, March 30th.
Moderation will be overseen by Nancy Zingrone, with administrative support from Natasha Chisdes who you an reach at mrschiz@chizfilm.net.
To begin registering for the course, please send an e-mail with “Register 2023” in the subject line to parapsychologyonline@gmail.com. Once received, you will be sent a reply e-mail with link to short questionnaire, which we are asking anyone who wishes to attend the live presentation sessions to complete. If you do not wish to fill out the questionnaire, don’t worry – you can still receive information on how to find the session recordings and access other materials we hope to have available from our speakers later on.
If you fill out the questionnaire, you will get the ParaMOOC 2023 Zoom meeting links, as well as notifications throughout the course reminding you about days and times, and upcoming events after ParaMOOC 2023 is over.
We hope you’ll join us again for the ParaMOOC this year. And keep an eye on the ParaMOOC playlist on the Parapsychology Foundation’s YouTube Channel as we’re going to continue to upload past presentations as we can.
References
Collison-Morley, L. (1912). Greek and Roman ghost stories. Oxford, England: B. H. Blackwell.
Ebon, M. (Ed.) (1968). True experiences with ghosts. New York: Signet Books/New American Library.
James, W. (1897). Address by the President. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 12, 2 – 10.
Maher, M. C. (1992). The study of ghosts: A brief synopsis. In L. A. Henkel & G. R. Schmeidler (Eds.) Research in Parapsychology 1990 (pp. 137 – 138). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.
Orth, T. (2022, October 20). Two-thirds of Americans say they’ve had a paranormal encounter. Available via the YouGov Polling Group website:”
To learn more about how to register watch this informative YouTube video!