1On the language we use for anomalies and unexplained phenomenons

The field of study of anomalies is called anomalistics1. See also ASSAP2.

There is also parapsychology.

Paranormal3

The "para-" prefix means "beyond" or "beside".4

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/48bwox/exskeptics_what_event_convinced_you_of_the/

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Weekend/psychic-reveals-tricks-trade/story?id=10590096

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r000100340001-4

Extra-sensory perception is also called "second sight".5

Did Carl Sagan say this? https://www.iacworld.org/top-3-psychic-anomalies-according-to-carl-sagan/

2On beginning anomaly research

Where should we begin? We can begin from these:

  • corroborated report by an independent third party (not a self-report by the psychic himself),
  • evidence in which its authors have no motive to falsify the record,
  • accounts of skeptical ghost hunters.

Jeffrey Mishlove's "New Thinking Allowed"6 is indispensable. It is very suitable for beginners. He asks great questions to experts, producing lots of high-quality starting points.

Reddit is a better starting point than Google for anomaly research. Example: The "Psychic" subreddit7.

Choose a class of phenomenon (two example classes are precognition and psychokinesis). Focus one day on finding evidences of it.

For corroborated reports, we can begin from the document "Newspaper articles re psychics"8, which is part of the Stargate project of the CIA.

Either all those people are insane, or there is something we don't know. If there is one or two reports, the reporter may be hallucinating. If there are thousands of reports, there may be something going on.

Not enough details in this report9

Has any skeptic changed his belief?10

3My work queue

3.1Reddit

There are lots of pointers in Loyd Auerbach's Reddit interview11: links to research organizations, phenomenons corroborated by multiple witnesses12, phone calls from the dead13, communicating with the dead14, visualizations and psychic shields15, and so on.

According to Auerbach 201816, Joseph W. McMoneagle was CIA Project Star Gate's number-one remote viewer.

CIA document "an assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning"

From USA government "sensemaking"17, to corroborate:

  • 'In 2014, the Office of Naval Research embarked on a four-year, $3.85 million research program to explore the phenomena it calls premonition and intuition, or “Spidey sense,” for sailors and Marines.'
  • "a 2006 incident in Iraq, when Staff Sergeant Martin Richburg, using intuition, prevented carnage in an IED, or improvised explosive device, incident"
  • "Fifty years ago in Vietnam, Joe McMoneagle used his sixth sense to avoid stepping on booby traps, falling into punji pits, and walking into Viet Cong ambushes. His ability to sense danger was not lost on his fellow soldiers, and the power of his intuitive capabilities spread throughout his military unit."

On CIA Project STARGATE https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectSTARGATE/

On remote viewing https://www.reddit.com/r/remoteviewing/

Reddit psionics

Paranormal

Past lives https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/cyjipx/my_aunts_friends_son_is_living_his_last_life/

Mass hysteria

4On testing alleged mind-body interactions

4.1On the legitimacy of psychic claims

Psychic claims are falsifiable, but unfortunately most are frauds. We should test those which are not frauds, as seriously as we test scientific theories.

It seems to me that, in the "psychic" world, fame and legitimacy are inversely correlated.

Cold reading is not psychic.

Where do we find the real psychics, if they exist at all? We should begin not from famous "psychics", but we should begin from "proven" psychics, those who have solved police cases several times.

Can we trust these people?

  • Bob Olson claims to have a methodology18 for his "Genuine & Legitimate Psychic Mediums List"19, but he puts a disclaimer20, so is he saying anything at all?
  • "Troy Griffin claims he's worked on more than 100 missing persons cases."21

It is not about 100% accuracy; it is about much better than chance.

If police knows psychics, then there will be no cold cases? Does the existence of cold cases prove that psychics do not exist?

It is easy to test psychic mediums, telepaths, clairvoyants, and other kinds of psychics. However, it is difficult to replicate the test, because, if it works, it works only with a particular psychic, so it is hard for different researchers at different places to replicate the experiment at different times.

If we can prove that psychic mediums are reliable, can we infer the existence of disembodied minds?

4.2On Russell Targ's claim of remote viewing

How do we test it? Follow the protocol.

Banned TEDTalk about Psychic Abilities | Russell Targ | suespeaks.org https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBl0cwyn5GY

4.3On police cases allegedly solved by psychics

Psychic detective22

We need a psychic who has solved several cases and is corroborated by an independent third party (such as the police; the case must not be self-reported by the psychic himself). He is probably not famous. He probably does not call himself "psychic" because that word has been tainted by fraudsters.

From a 2000 article by CIA23, I infer:

  • Police uses psychics, but rarely, and mostly as last resort.
  • Most psychics are unreliable, although some have unexplainedly high accuracy.

Is there any people who unexplainedly solve several police cases?242526

How do we verify those claims? We can ask the police directly. I think we can assume that the police are honest.

4.4On possessions, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), and near-death experiences (NDEs)

Sam Parnia, AWARE II study

Pim van Lommel

How do we verify, test, explain possessions and out-of-body experiences?

4.5Wanted: replicable magick experiments

  • Notes?

    • The presence of the experimenter affects the result?
    • The experiments may need to be repeated many times?

  • Experiment ideas, ordered from the easiest to repeat:

    • Extrasensory perception

      • Astral projection

        1. Get a person (A) who can astral-project.
        2. Generate a bit X.
        3. Ask A about X.

      • Dream precognition

        • Telepathy

          1. Get two telepathic people A and B. (If you are telepathic yourself, you can be any one of them.)
          2. Generate a bit X (0 or 1) that only you and A know.
          3. Let A telepathically tell X to B. (Take care to isolate each of you to avoid sensory leakage.)
          4. Ask B about X.

      • Spirit possession

        • Procedure:

          1. Get two mediums A and B. (If you are a medium yourself, you can be A.)
          2. Get A to summon a spirit S.
          3. Generate a bit X (0 or 1) that only you and A know.
          4. Let A tell X to S.
          5. Get S into B. (This needs more detail.)
          6. Ask the S-possessed B about X. If he/she consistently knows, we may have a support for dualism.
          7. Get S out of B.
        • If the experiment result is promising, we can test the spirit's working memory capacity by replacing the bit X with a string, a number, a sentence, or whatever longer. The only important constraint is that you need to pick an X that is easy to remember but hard to guess.

        • Problems:

          1. Mediation may be tiring? (Can get another medium?)
          2. Spirits may refuse to cooperate? (Can get another spirit?)

    • Joint micropsychokinesis

      • What if many people try to influence a RNG at once? So far experiments one person influences a RNG at a time. Does the effect add up?

        • Is there even any effect at all?

  • We might dismiss one person for hallucinating. Two unrelated honest people corroborating each other are less likely to be hallucinating. The more people say the same thing, the more serious the claim is. Not necessarily more true, but surely more serious. Most people are not pathological liars.

  • From the ghost's point of view, it is we who are haunting them, not they who are haunting us. Or is it not that simple?

  • aggregators

  • some ghost pictures are due to crappy camera https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/6jdy18/question_why_does_every_ghost_picture_seem_to_be/

  • scientific?

  • 2018-08-13

    • I was too scared to view some materials at night. I did these:

      • Play "Yakety Sax" in the background.
      • Surf the Internet with my sister.

4.6Obtaining magickal powers?

5English-Indonesian term concordance

English Indonesian
psychic cenayang, "orang pintar"
occult gaib
shaman dukun
roaming spirit arwah gentayangan
ghost hantu

6Bibliography

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalistics↩

  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_the_Scientific_Study_of_Anomalous_Phenomena↩

  3. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=paranormal↩

  4. https://www.etymonline.com/word/para-↩

  5. https://psychicelements.com/blog/are-psychic-abilities-hereditary/↩

  6. <2019-09-12> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDclhMCOIszQqH61Hy712_G-1v_2O3aN1↩

  7. https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychic/↩

  8. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R002000240037-5.pdf↩

  9. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/psychic-mediums_n_5acf4961e4b08337adca0b62↩

  10. inconclusive https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/vx51d/reddit_has_anyone_been_to_a_psychicmedium_as_a/↩

  11. <2019-09-06> https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/9g3ero/hi_reddit_im_loyd_auerbach_parapsychologist_ask/↩

  12. <2019-09-06> https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/9g3ero/hi_reddit_im_loyd_auerbach_parapsychologist_ask/e6163hs/↩

  13. <2019-09-06> https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/9g3ero/hi_reddit_im_loyd_auerbach_parapsychologist_ask/e615rz4/↩

  14. https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/9g3ero/hi_reddit_im_loyd_auerbach_parapsychologist_ask/e619ma3/↩

  15. <2019-09-06> https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/9g3ero/hi_reddit_im_loyd_auerbach_parapsychologist_ask/e616u9x/↩

  16. <2019-09-06> https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/9g3ero/hi_reddit_im_loyd_auerbach_parapsychologist_ask/e618myt/↩

  17. https://time.com/4721715/phenomena-annie-jacobsen/↩

  18. https://bestpsychicmediums.com/testedaslegitimate↩

  19. https://bestpsychicmediums.com/thelist.htm↩

  20. https://bestpsychicmediums.com/disclaimer.htm↩

  21. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9k33av/a-psychic-detective-tells-us-how-he-solves-murders↩

  22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_detective↩

  23. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R000100280009-3.pdf↩

  24. 10 Real Psychics Who Helped Solve Mysteries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nCaiJbKdFw↩

  25. https://patch.com/michigan/northville/michigan-medium-solves-cold-cases--spotlighted-in-investigation-discoverys-newest-series-restless-souls↩

  26. https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/6d4e41/request_any_cases_that_were_actually_helped_by_a/↩