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What sets the paranormal apart from other pseudosciences is a reliance on explanations for alleged phenomena that are well outside the bounds of established science. Thus, paranormal phenomena include extrasensory perception (ESP), telekinesis, ghosts, poltergeists, life after death, reincarnation, faith healing, human auras, and so forth.
In American science fiction of the 1950s and '60s, psionics was a proposed discipline that applied principles of engineering (especially electronics) to the study (and employment) of paranormal or psychic phenomena, such as extrasensory perception, telepathy and psychokinesis. [1]
Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near-death experiences, synchronicity, apparitional experiences, etc. [1] Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it.
What does science say about ghosts? Christine Simmonds-Moore, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia who specializes in parapsychological research.
The Institute of Noetic Sciences [a] (IONS) is an American non-profit parapsychological [2] research institute. It was co-founded in 1973 by former astronaut Edgar Mitchell, [3] [4] [5] the sixth man to walk on the Moon, along with investor Paul N. Temple [6] and others interested in purported paranormal phenomena, [2] in order to encourage and conduct research on noetics and human potentials.
Author John Potts says that the present day pursuit of "amateur ghost hunting" can be traced back to the spiritualist era and early organizations founded to investigate paranormal phenomena, like London's The Ghost Club and the Society for Psychical Research, but that modern investigations are unrelated to academic parapsychology.
Robert Baker wrote that many paranormal phenomena can be explained via psychological effects such as hallucinations, sleep paralysis and hidden memories, a phenomenon in which experiences that originally make little conscious impression are filed away in the brain to be suddenly remembered later in an altered form.
Parapsychology is a field of research that studies a number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and apparitional experiences.