快猫短视频

Chris French (MIT Press)

DURING a TV show in the early 1990s, a man describes waking up in the night with a weight pressing on his chest. He could neither move nor breathe. He says this is the result of a visiting ghost. Later that week, on another TV show, a different man tells a similar story of waking up in the night with a weight on his chest. He, too, could neither move nor breathe. For him, the cause was a visiting alien.

I heard both stories live, having been invited onto the shows as the then editor of The Skeptic magazine. It seemed obvious that both men were experiencing something real and physical, and that, for both, the interpretation lay in their belief systems. Familiar with the work of experts like Chris French, a researcher at what is now Goldsmiths, University of London, I knew the name of what had really happened to them: sleep paralysis.

Some years later, French has written a nuanced book about this phenomenon and the many others that attract non-scientific explanations. In The Science of Weird Shit: Why our minds conjure the paranormal, he shares historical accounts and scientific studies showing that the feeling of a presence can be very strong during sleep paralysis, often an unnerving (if relatively common) experience.

Small wonder, then, that such events produce paranormal interpretations. In reality, says French, sleep paralysis 鈥渃an be thought of as glitches in the normal sleep cycle during which, to put it simply, the mind wakes up but the body does not鈥�.

French now runs the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths (鈥渁nomalistic鈥� is the polite version of 鈥渨eird shit鈥�). When he set out, few considered the field worthy of study. French originally believed in the paranormal, became what he calls a 鈥渄ogmatic鈥� sceptic, then shifted slowly to understanding that 鈥渋t鈥檚 complicated鈥�.

Here, in a book that reads like a non-fiction thriller, his first job is to define the paranormal, opting to follow the Cambridge Dictionary entry: 鈥渋mpossible to explain by known natural forces or by science鈥�. It isn鈥檛 perfect, he says 鈥� for example, consciousness fits that description, though few call that paranormal.

But the definition is good enough, because it takes in the three main general areas parapsychologists think about: extrasensory perception, psychokinesis and life after death. These areas lead French into alien abductions, false memories, reincarnation, precognitive dreams, coincidences and more.

He isn鈥檛 the first to write a general book on the paranormal. What makes his different is its mix of academic knowledge and practical application. For example, this approach offers opportunities to explore the cognitive biases that can negatively affect our decisions and behaviour. Take pareidolia, where we perceive meaningful images from random patterns 鈥� such as a face in a tree or in stains.

Then there is suggestibility, where we are primed to accept false memories as real. French has run experiments showing how memory works, as opposed to how we think it works. We process a mere fraction of the sensory information available (known as bottom-up processing) and have to fill in gaps from what we already know (top-down processing). Constant interaction between the processes helps create a good-enough model of our world. But there is also the potential for error: illusory perceptions creep in if the input is ambiguous or degraded. This, he says, is how we end up seeing things that aren鈥檛 there.

In one experiment, he found most people don鈥檛 remember how 鈥渇our鈥� appears on clock faces that use Roman numerals. Participants opted for IV, as it looks elsewhere, when in fact it is represented on most timepieces as IIII.

French has been a frequent guest on TV shows to explain phenomena, run tests on psychics or, in one of his nervier exploits, perform a cold reading as a 鈥減sychic鈥�. This relies on making vague, general statements and on observing the subject鈥檚 reactions, often appearing to know details they haven鈥檛 disclosed. The sitter gave his reading a glowing review.

Another time, he joined a TV crew documenting the belief in reincarnation common among the Druze people, a religious sect in Lebanon. While they failed to turn up evidence to support the belief, French concluded the Druze may benefit from it because families help children claiming to be the reincarnation of one of their own.

In The Science of Weird Shit, French鈥檚 goal isn鈥檛 to tell people they are wrong, but to set their experiences in the context of psychology. He understands that it is all very much a matter of interpretation. If they wanted, he tells students, he could present a course taking the believer鈥檚 side and convince them of the paranormal. But he doesn鈥檛.

Wendy Grossman is a writer聽based聽in聽London