Proffessional Development

Haunted Psychology

Melvin Cooley Sr

Brown Mackie College

Haunted Psychology

The belief in spirits has been part of people's lives for thousands of years. I will look at the psychological aspect of apparitions and haunting's and possible explanations for this unexplained phenomenon. Individuals are more likely to see ghosts if they have signs of schizophrenia, heightened frontal lobe activity or have had a traumatic experience. These are only a few of the conditions that can lead to seeing or hearing events that would otherwise be labeled as supernatural. The belief in the supernatural is a major contributor to actually experiencing such a phenomenon, it is also the reason many will hold to their beliefs and not listen to worldly reasons for their events.

Individuals that suffer from schizophrenia are prone to hallucinations do to their illness. Schizophrenia is a complex disease that many have hypothesized over the cause for its origin in people. There is no one cause, which can be associated to the onslaught of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is believed to be caused by a multiple combination of biological and environmental elements. Currently the neurotransmitters glutamine and dopamine are thought to be the cause of the symptoms.

The magical Ideation scale is a 30 item questionnaire that measures the individual's belief in the supernatural. Subjects who endorse the magical beliefs evidence are found to be stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Many patients with schizophrenia score high on the Magical Ideation scale. Most importantly, even entirely healthy subject with relatively high scores on the Magical Ideation Scale display psychological abnormalities that are similar to those displayed by patients with schizophrenia. Individuals show comprise impairments of the left hemisphere that mediates language along with impairment in the Temporal lobe functions.

Excess productions of these neurotransmitters seem to cause symptoms associated with schizophrenia. During hallucinations the proper areas of the brain become active, if the individual hears voices, the Temporal lobe shows to be active in MRI scans. Likewise patients that see apparitions have the appropriate heightened activity in the Occipital lobe. Both of these lobes become active without any environmental stimuli (Feldman, 2010). During these episodes the patient believes he or she is hearing or seeing things are taking place in their environment that others cannot see or hear. "Sadly a large number of mentally ill people suffer from delusions of persecution by demons, the dead, or other supernatural entities (Penot, 2010)."

Schizophrenia is much like the belief is the paranormal although we know both exist we cannot write either one out with only one explanation. There are many documented cases that are reported by people that have no signs of schizophrenia. Electromagnetic fields in association with the frontal lobe may be another reason, why people may see things that are not really there. Dr. Presinger a professor from Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada has done studies on this topic.

"Presinger has demonstrated that a sensitive temporal lobe-the area that is responsible for regulation of emotions and motivated behaviors-together with naturally occurring magnetic fields, can trigger a ghostly encounter (Lockman, 2003)." There are naturally occurring magnetic fields all around us, add to that the number of magnetic field created by manmade objects and we are constantly surrounded by them. Individuals with sensitive frontal lobes