About Me

January 2021

The issue cannot be avoided. Are paranormal investigators qualified to make statements on the afterlife and all things immaterial? What degrees or experience do we have that allow us to analyze “data” with any measure of professionalism? Are there no experts in the paranormal, as fellow member Keith Linder (MUCH more about him coming) affirms in his books? Why do I think that I have anything to contribute to this field of inquiry?

There are no stand-alone degrees in Paranormal Studies. The University of Virginia offers a degree in the Division of Perceptual Studies (https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/history-of-dops/) through the School of Medicine; you can take courses at the University of Arizona through the Department of Psychology, where the preeminent researcher of consciousness, Gary Schwartz, carries out his research into survival of consciousness (https://psychology.arizona.edu/users/gary-schwartz); and The University of Edinburgh offers programs and courses through the Koestler Parapsychology Unit, housed under the Department of Psychology (https://koestlerunit.wordpress.com/research-overview/). I’m sure there are other micro programs around the world, but my bet is that they are housed under a standard, accepted, academic discipline. This is significant for the following reasons: parapsychology is a sub specialty within Psychology or Medicine, not a stand-alone discipline, and it is quite rare to find this course of study anywhere outside of the places I mention above.

My doctoral degree is in Spanish and Romance Languages from Yale University. How would a degree like mine apply to the study of the paranormal? When you survive the boot camp that is Yale graduate school, you learn how to analyze, deconstruct, and contextualize a wide variety of texts; you conduct research and figure out how to solve problems and puzzles related to the origins, intentions, and purposes of stories, novels, essays, manuals, and historical documents; and you dive deep into Hispanic folklore, much of which centers on tales of ghosts, cryptids, assorted demons, zombies, witches, and supernatural experiences of every conceivable variety.

However, no matter what one’s background, you do need the ability to understand the nature of consciousness and how it survives death; and no, I cannot claim to be able to explain that. Nobody can. Not even Gary Schwartz, who has dedicated his life to understanding consciousness and survival of death, can explain how that might work. In fact, nobody can really claim to explain how consciousness works, how it can either be produced by the brain (materialism) or how it can function without a material body (post-materialism). The continued search for answers and the excitement of the journey is what animates me and gives me a sense of purpose. My entire life has been defined by experiences that are far beyond what scientific materialism can explain; I would like to understand more deeply what those experiences mean.

What I bring to the International Society for Paranormal Research is an ability to cut through theories, data, and narratives to the psychology behind them, the driving forces that animate the search for answers. I am interested in the analysis of data and how we arrive at conclusions. I hope, above all, to create a community of researchers and investigators willing to share their findings and the meaning that they attach to them. The study of the paranormal, the non-material, is multidisciplinary. No single academic discipline can claim to own the field. The notion that only the hard sciences can possibly legitimize our work needs to be revised; for the hard sciences do not, and cannot, make claims on phenomena that falls outside of the material universe. Defending the paranormal is more like building a legal case that incorporates the social sciences, above all. To understand the paranormal, you have to understand the human mind–and our conscious and subconscious experiences. I recommend Victor Zammit’s “A Lawyer Presents Evidence for the Afterlife” for those of you interested in the legal angle for studying anomalous phenomena.

In closing, I invite you to join me in this mission, not because we will arrive at definitive answers sanctioned by Science, but because there is nothing more mysterious and exciting than the journey to the non-material realms where we find, in the end, our true nature.

Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

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Honoring the Role of Instinct in Paranormal Research

Take a moment to watch this short video featuring Dr. Gabor Mate

The night that I walked into a house claiming demonic activity, I knew that I should not have. The result of ignoring a ‘gut feeling’ was over a week of spiritual, emotional, and physical illness. I remember sitting on the floor of the bedroom in that house, my teammates arrayed on the bed; I knew that the darkness that surrounded us was ripping holes in my heart and mind and was influencing my friends to behave oddly and out of character. I saw that my camera was malfunctioning in ways that it never had before; I could not take photographs. My recorder spit back loud interference and static; I could not record the activity in the room. I knew that this energy was what we call ‘evil’, in the sense that it sought to confuse, disconnect, distract, divide, and create despair. So why did I stay, when the second I stepped into the foyer my entire psychic alarm system warned me to turn back?

We become disconnected from ourselves in the way Dr. Maté describes when we decide that what we think the world wants or expects from us is more important than our internal alarm systems or our gut feelings or instincts. In my case, my kryptonite is a desire to please. I did not want to let down my team by backing out of a dangerous situation. Of course, they would have understood completely; but I did not give them the chance. I had decided that my own emotional, spiritual, and psychological well being was less important than possibly disappointing my team and the client. I am socially conditioned to seek out others’ approval; I have developed a skill for divining what somebody wants or needs and attempting to supply it for them. This poses a problem in research of any kind: if you seek to please those with whom you are collaborating to the detriment of your own inner compass, you may miss the truth about the case you are investigating and the motivations of those involved.

There are other ways that this disconnection from your core instincts can sink you in your pursuit of the truth. Excessive curiosity can lead one to a sort of arrogance, where you believe that you can figure out a great mystery if you read more, collect more data, conduct more investigations, or write about it from multiple angles. If you keep attacking a problem, it will eventually yield up all the answers. This is my greatest sin, but also my greatest passion; sometimes, it is difficult to disentangle dedication and devotion from arrogant assumptions about one’s ability to ‘solve’ the most intransigent conundrums of the universe. The evil in the house I ‘investigated’ (more like ‘succumbed to’) was not something that had an answer, because I was incapable of posing the right questions. Whatever was there would have laughed at my questions, anyway; one of the characteristics of demonic phenomena is its resistance to logic and reason. When one brings a desire to understand that which resists understanding, the result can be a frustration that leads to despair.

Other forms of disconnection look like a desire for fame, for attention, for money, or for status. The line between true investigation and research into the paranormal is so often blurred by the entertainment industry that I wonder if anyone can trust the ‘evidence’ that emerges from programs designed to sell themselves. I remember the moment I realized that looking cute for the cameras while ‘chasing ghosts’ had replaced any serious attempts at reaching honest answers. It was the beginning of my spiritual crisis.

What do I ask of paranormal investigators? Of parapsychologists? Of anyone studying the nonphysical phenomena that hovers between dimensions? I ask that, in addition to collecting data, to analysis, to publication of findings and reports, that you pay attention to your instincts. Allow your ‘gut feelings’ to guide your way through a difficult case, even if that seems unscientific. Following your deepest compass, your inner voice, will lead you to the truth eventually; and sometimes, it will lead you away from a situation that poses a spiritual danger to your soul.

—Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD; founder, International Society for Paranormal Research

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Anxiety and the Paranormal: What’s the Link?

Dr Neil Dagnall said:  “This study shows there is an association between belief in the paranormal, lack of control and anxiety. We have observed that magical thinking is likely to occur when individuals believe they lack control over external events.

“One reason for this could be that paranormal beliefs represent an attempt to establish control and reduce anxiety – in this context, mental toughness shows a person has control and reduces anxiety and should be associated with lower levels of paranormal belief.” (https://www.mmu.ac.uk/hpsc/news-and-media/rke/story/?id=7559)

Anxiety has followed me for most of my life. As an adult, I have struggled with it mightily, trying everything from medication to therapy to alternative treatments in a futile attempt to banish it. My latest “tactic” is accepting it for what it is: a finely-tuned adaptive trait that sometimes creates psychic pain. My anxiety allows me to notice too much; that can include my own thoughts, which can quickly become distorted by fear. In the wild, I might have survived while the rest of my tribe perished. I don’t eat food that is slightly off, and I spare myself the convulsive illnesses that others fall prey to; I notice a snake in a hole before anyone else has any clue that it’s there; I know when someone is plotting something and might be a danger to me or someone close to me, and I protect myself. I can sense an angry dog before it appears around a corner; I know that a car is racing around a curve moments before it does. The list goes on and on.

In the realm of the paranormal, my acute sensitivities are both a blessing and a curse. The article quoted above is yet another abortive attempt to understand highly sensitive people with a marked tendency towards anxiety. This article and many others in the discipline of psychology attempt to understand me in ways that simply don’t take into account the reality that I experience. The idea that “paranormal beliefs represent an attempt to establish control and reduce anxiety” is exactly misguided.

Paranormal investigations are anxiety producing. They teach you that you have no control over the spirit world, or however you might with to designate the unseen realms where consciousness continues to communicate with those who seek its manifestations. My motivations were not to reduce my anxiety or to gain control, but to understand anomalous experiences that I had experienced my entire life. Perhaps wanting to understand is an attempt to gain control, but in that case, every time we wish to know something can be pathologized as a desire to gain mastery over chaos. To be human is to want to know, to seek to solve mysteries, to figure out reality to the extent that we can.

The first time I captured an EVP on my recorder at an abandoned psychiatric hospital, the last thing I felt was control or mastery over fear. I felt overwhelmed by the bizarre voice that sang childish tunes in a place where no children had been present for decades. Very quickly, it became clear to me the limits of my understanding. Reality became more warped, more unfathomable, and far more complex and multilayered than anything I had previously surmised. In fact, if anxiety is produced by change, the intrusion of the unknown, and a loss of control over and comprehension of reality, then what I had stumbled into was the perfect recipe for anxiety. It was not unusual for me to have panic attacks when the atmosphere thickened, and I sensed a presence–or many of them–without any real idea what or who it was.

Fear turns you into a hyper-attuned radar for frequencies outside of your normal range; you feel energies and sense changes in the environment on an instinctual level. It’s not a snake in a hole, but a sense that something or someone has entered your space. The animal brain kicks into high gear: What is it? Where is it? What does it want? And, most importantly, is it a threat to me or my tribe? Here’s the problem: you simply cannot answer those questions; and because the answers are elusive, your heart rate rises, your breathing becomes shallow, you feel a flood of adrenaline, and you have to force yourself to stay in that area, to not run. There is no control here, no mastery of anything; you want to know what is in your space, but you cannot, because all you can do is catch a voice, see a shadow, get a fleeting glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye or feel the touch of something on your lower back, only to see later that you have received three, distinct scratches. You are attacked without being able to discern the predator. It can be terrifying beyond measure.

This brings me to the “mental toughness” addressed in this study. If the premise is faulty, then so is this conclusion: namely, that the more toughness you develop, the more you will feel in control, the less anxious you will be, and *voila*, you will cease engaging in “magical thinking” and the paranormal. In addition to insulting–equating belief in the paranormal with “magical thinking”–this statement seems like magical thinking to me. We are not in control. Even a minimal incursion into the worlds that open up when you explore consciousness will show you that control is an illusion. I would love to believe that I control my destiny, my reality, my surroundings, my circumstances, and those around me–but that is a far greater delusion than “belief” in the paranormal.

Those who seriously study the paranormal are not doing so due to “belief” in an ideology or philosophy that supports such things as the existence of non-material aspects of reality, but rather we study these phenomena because we have, generally speaking, experiences that are non ordinary in nature and cannot be explained by our dominant epistemology: materialism. If you grow up perceiving aspects of the world that others do not perceive, you want to know what you are experiencing. You want to know if there are others like you. You learn that science can’t explain everything; you learn that psychology has its limits, its biases, and its ideologies that blind it to the breadth and depth of human experiences. Science turns people like me with extraordinary sensitivities into studies in self-delusion and pathology. That does a tremendous disservice to intricate mysteries of the unknown. It’s gaslighting.

So. If I believed, however erroneously, that I am in control (of what?), I would stop all this anxiety-fueled investigation of the unknown. I would be a good materialist, a strong, mentally tough woman without all of the nonsense. Seems to me that our culture has such a good grasp of ultimate reality and everything that inhabits the multiverse that I do not need to explore anymore. I need to stop the search, or risk trivialization of my person. Sounds like ontological fascism, or an epistemology of the dominant culture.

If that is the trade off–feeling “out of control” and anxious when the world reveals itself as utterly strange sometimes–I will take it over a false sense of security and a belief that academia and materialism can save me from myself.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

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The Three Most Annoying Questions Paranormal Investigators Have To Answer

I dread the ‘reveal’, the ‘outing’, of Kirsten as Paranormal Investigator; or, God forbid, Ghost Hunter. This happens, eventually, at work or at church, which is part of the reason I have joined and abandoned eight churches in five years. The voice changes, lowers: “so . . . ” they say, as if they were about to ask me about a sordid affair I’m having, or query me regarding illicit drug use, or any number of other unsavory possibilities, “I hear you . . . hunt ghosts”. Then they giggle, or raise their eyebrows, cock their heads, and smile in that particular way that tells me that they are thrilled that they have just discovered that I am mad or stupid. They are normal in comparison; they are infinitely stable, acceptable, and logical when standing next to a GHOST HUNTER. Then come the questions. I feel heavy, trapped, and exhausted by this point, because I know exactly how the conversation is going to go. I usually fall into a chair and prepare myself for the stereotypes, the ignorance, and the criticism that is about to come my way. Yes, I could simply refuse to discuss this topic with people and walk away; but deep in my heart, I still think that I have the opportunity to change hearts and minds. And no, it doesn’t usually happen; but hope springs eternal. So, without further delay, here are the Top Three Most Annoying Questions for the Paranormal Investigator:

1. So you believe in ghosts???

No. I don’t believe in them. I don’t believe in you, either. I see you and am talking to you, but I don’t BELIEVE in you. You are not God or Jesus or Buddha. I am interacting with you. Therefore, I ascribe some reality to you. You seem rather material and solid, and you are asking questions that I can hear, and I am responding to you, so you exist–materially and spiritually. Now, for that word, “ghost”, let’s drop that already, OK? Nobody knows what a ghost is. All we can do is describe what we think it is, but since we are talking about a non-material entity that manifests itself in a variety of mysterious ways in this visible universe, let’s stop pretending that we know its identity and purpose. Oh, and if you’re envisioning Caspar floating in a sheet, can we just end this miserable conversation right now???

2. You’re so smart; why do you believe this stuff is real?

Well . . . thank you for the compliment. I am, like, SO SMART. So to prove that to you, let’s deconstruct your assumptions, turn them on their head, and force YOU to define reality. I already discussed the ‘believe in’ issue. Let’s move on to ‘this stuff’: what you mean by this is ANYTHING that you don’t understand or that you can’t sense. If your definition of reality is challenged by what others have discovered, or simply by other people’s observations and experiences that point to something beyond the everyday, ordinary reality of collective consciousness, then you decide to attack someone else’s cosmovision. In other words, if you don’t perceive it or understand it, it doesn’t exist. Let’s talk about the word “real”: this is one of those words like ‘love’ or ‘ghosts’ that simply can’t be defined in a simple, straightforward way. What you REALLY mean by this word is this: real is what is real to me, to my community, to my colleagues, to my family, and is supported by my values, ideologies, politics, beliefs, and stereotypes. If what you experience falls outside of what my community values, or what makes me comfortable, or what my church says, or what my chem professor told me, in other words, if YOUR experience causes me discomfort because it falls outside of what I am willing to accept in my life, I will turn on you and label you delusional or strange. The labels keep you at a distance and allow me to continue to live in my little bubble.

3. Can I go with you on an investigation?

No.

Truth is, most people who ask insulting questions of a paranormal researcher are, deep down, fascinated by the varieties of anomalous consciousness (ghosts). They want to know more, but they’re afraid. I understand that. It’s wise to be afraid. At some point, they admit that they are scared of what I do. So I ask them: “What are you scared of?” The answer is, usually, “I’m afraid that ghosts are real”.

That’s where the conversation can start. Yes, my dear, ghosts are real. Now please stop calling them that.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

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