Living Person Apparitions are reports in which someone sees, hears, or senses a person who is actually alive but physically absent at the time of the experience (apparition).
These experiences have been studied in parapsychology and psychical research for over a century. They are sometimes called veridical apparitions of the living or living agent apparitions.
Common Features
The experiencer perceives a recognizable person.
The person is alive at the time of the apparition.
The apparition may appear visually, be heard speaking, or be sensed as a presence.
The experience may occur during an emotionally significant event involving the distant person.
Types of Living-Person Apparitions
1. Crisis Apparitions
The most frequently reported type.
A person appears to a friend or relative at the moment they are:
Seriously injured
Experiencing a medical emergency: Consult with a Medical Doctor, ASAP.
In extreme danger; Call 911.
Believing they may die
The apparition is later found to have coincided with the crisis.
2. Experimental Apparitions
In some psychical research experiments, a “sender” attempts to mentally project an image or presence to a distant “receiver.” Results have been mixed and remain controversial.
3. Spontaneous Apparitions
A person unexpectedly perceives someone who is alive and elsewhere, without any known crisis occurring.
Psychological Explanations
Controversial psychology may interprets these experiences as:
Misperceptions
Vivid mental imagery
Hypnagogic or hypnopompic experiences (between sleeping and waking)
Memory reconstruction
Expectation or emotional longing
Parapsychological Interpretations
Some researchers have proposed that living person apparitions may involve:
Telepathy
Psi mediated communication
An unconscious projection of information during emotional crises
A temporary manifestation of consciousness at a distance
Historical Research
Researchers associated with the Society for Psychical Research collected thousands of reports of apparitions, including many involving living persons. Classic investigators documented numerous cases in the landmark work Phantasms of the Living.
Current View
There is scientific some consensus that living person apparitions represent an actual paranormal phenomenon. However, they remain of interest to psychologists, consciousness researchers, and parapsychologists because some cases appear difficult to explain through ordinary coincidence or known psychological processes alone.
In short, a living person apparition is an experience in which a person perceives someone who is alive but not physically present, with explanations ranging from normal psychological processes to theories of telepathy or other psi related mechanisms.
The Super Psi Hypothesis is a theory in parapsychology that attempts to explain phenomena that appear to involve communication with the dead without assuming that consciousness survives bodily death.
According to the hypothesis, a living person’s unconscious mind may possess extraordinarily powerful psi abilities, including:
Telepathy: (accessing other people’s thoughts)
Clairvoyance: (accessing distant or hidden information)
Precognition: (accessing future information)
Psychokinesis (PK): (influencing physical events)
The idea is that these abilities may operate on a vast, unconscious scale, creating experiences that seem to come from deceased individuals.
Why Was It Proposed?
Researchers studying mediumship, apparitions, and other survival related phenomena noticed that some cases may be interpreted in two ways:
Survival Hypothesis:
The deceased person’s consciousness continues after death and communicates with the living.
Super Psi Hypothesis:
The living person’s unconscious psi abilities gather information may come from many sources and create the appearance of communication with the dead.
Example
Suppose a medium provides accurate information about a deceased person.
Survival interpretation: The medium is communicating with the deceased.
Super Psi interpretation: The medium unconsciously may obtain the information through telepathy from living relatives, clairvoyance, or other psi processes.
Strengths of the Super Psi Hypothesis
Does not require survival of consciousness after death.
Provides a theoretical explanation for some mediumship and after death communication reports.
Fits within a broader psi framework already accepted by some parapsychologists.
Criticisms
Critics argue that Super Psi may become difficult to test because it may invoke virtually unlimited psi abilities to explain any anomaly. Some researchers believe certain cases contain information that appears difficult to obtain solely from living minds.
Current Status
The Super Psi Hypothesis remains a theoretical concept within parapsychology. Neither Super Psi nor the Survival Hypothesis has achieved acceptance within controversial psychology or neuroscience because they have been demonstrated under conditions that satisfy the broader parapsychology community.
In some groups of parapsychologist, the debate often centers on whether anomalous experiences are better explained by:
Survival of consciousness after death,
Extraordinary psi abilities of living individuals (Super Psi),
Psychological and cognitive factors,
Or some combination of these possibilities.
For researchers interested in postmortem survival, Super Psi is may be considered the strongest alternative explanation to the Survival Hypothesis.
Postmortem Survival refers to the hypothesis that some aspect of human consciousness, personality, or awareness continues to exist after physical death. Researchers in this field attempt to investigate whether consciousness can survive the death of the mind.
This topic is primarily studied within the field of Parapsychology and by organizations such as Society for Psychical Research and Parapsychological Association.
Major Areas of Research
Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)
NDEs occur when people report vivid experiences during life threatening situations or periods of clinical death.
Common features include:
Out of body experiences
Traveling through a tunnel
Encounters with deceased relatives
Feelings of peace and love
Life reviews
Interpretations:
Survivalists see NDEs as evidence that consciousness can exist apart from the mind.
Skeptics suggest neurological: Consult with a Neurologist, psychological, or physiological explanations.
After-Death Communications (ADCs)
ADCs are experiences in which bereaved individuals report sensing contact from deceased loved ones.
Examples include:
Hearing a loved one’s voice
Feeling their presence
Vivid dreams
Seeing apparitions
Receiving meaningful signs
Researchers often note that ADCs are relatively common and frequently comforting to those who experience them.
Deathbed Visions
Some dying individuals report seeing deceased relatives, spiritual beings, or unfamiliar landscapes shortly before death.
Questions studied include:
Are these hallucinations?
Are they influenced by culture?
Do they represent a genuine transition experience?
Mediumship Research
Mediums claim to obtain information from deceased persons.
Researchers investigate:
Accuracy of information
Blind and triple blind testing
In some cases, possibility of fraud
Alternative explanations such as cold reading or telepathy
Reincarnation Research
Some report memories of previous lives.
The best known researcher in this area was Ian Stevenson.
Researchers examine:
Verifiable details reported
Birthmarks corresponding to previous life injuries
Behavioral similarities
Apparition Studies
Apparitions are reported sightings or perceptions of deceased individuals.
Researchers distinguish between:
Crisis apparitions
Bereavement apparitions
Shared apparitions
Place related apparitions
The question is whether such experiences represent:
Psychological processes
Misperceptions
Evidence of survival
The Survival Hypothesis
The Survival Hypothesis proposes that consciousness can continue after bodily death.
Supporters argue that:
Some cases contain information difficult to explain conventionally.
Similar patterns appear across cultures.
Multiple lines of evidence converge on survival.
Alternative Explanations
Researchers also consider non-survival explanations:
Mind-based processes
Hallucinations
Memory errors
Expectation effects
Grief related experiences
Some fraud or information leakage
Psi among living persons (sometimes called the Super-Psi Hypothesis)
The Super-Psi theory suggests that apparent communication with the dead might actually result from extraordinary psychic abilities of living individuals rather than survival after death.
Many findings can be interpreted in multiple ways.
No universally accepted mechanism explains how consciousness could survive bodly death.
However, some researchers argue that the accumulated evidence from NDEs, ADCs, mediumship, reincarnation cases, and deathbed visions deserves continued scientific investigation.
Balanced Conclusion
Research into postmortem survival is one of the most fascinating and controversial areas in consciousness studies. While there is scientific consensus that consciousness survives death, there is an active body of research examining experiences and phenomena that some interpret as supporting survival. The debate continues between survival based explanations, psychological explanations, neurological explanations: Consult with a Neurologist, and psi-based alternatives.
The strongest approach is to examine the evidence critically, remain open to multiple interpretations, and distinguish carefully between personal beliefs and scientific conclusions.
Mutual Dreaming refers to the claim that two or more people share the same dream experience, either simultaneously or with remarkably similar details that they later compare.
Types of Mutual Dreaming
Simultaneous Shared Dreams
Two people report dreaming of each other or participating in the same dream scenario during the same night.
They later compare notes and find similarities.
Reciprocal Dreams
Person A dreams about Person B, and Person B dreams about Person A at roughly the same time.
Dream Telepathy Claims
Some researchers in parapsychology have suggested that information may occasionally be exchanged between minds during dreaming.
Psychological Explanations
Mainstream psychology offers several explanations for apparent mutual dreams:
Coincidence: People often dream about common themes, relationships, or shared concerns.
Selective Memory: Similarities are remembered while differences are forgotten.
Expectation Effects: After discussing dreams, people may unintentionally reconstruct memories to fit each other’s accounts.
Shared Experiences: Close friends, couples, or family members often have similar daily experiences and emotional concerns, which can produce similar dream content.
Parapsychological Perspective
Within parapsychology, mutual dreaming is sometimes viewed as a possible form of:
Dream telepathy
Mind to mind communication during sleep
Shared consciousness experiences
However, there is currently no widely accepted scientific evidence demonstrating that people can literally enter and share the same dream space. The phenomenon remains controversial and is considered unproven by conventional science.
Example
Suppose two siblings independently report dreaming that:
They were walking through the same unusual house,
Met the same deceased relative,
Heard the same message.
If the reports were recorded before either person discussed the dream, researchers might consider it a potential case of mutual dreaming worthy of investigation.
Related Concepts
Dream Telepathy
Telepathic Communication
Lucid Dreaming
Conscious Dreaming
Shared Apparitions
Phantasms of the Living
From a conventional scientific standpoint, mutual dreaming remains an intriguing anecdotal phenomenon. From a parapsychological standpoint, it is considered a possible area for investigating whether consciousness can interact beyond ordinary sensory communication.
Pip: Liberty Psychological Association — building what it calls the most comprehensive online library on mental health, psychology, and parapsychology in the world, which is either a mission statement or a very committed filing system.
Mara: Shervan K Shahhian and Liberty Psychological Association are covering serious ground today — psychokinesis and how researchers try to measure it, psychic experience and the question of non-human intelligences, and auditory hallucinations on the clinical side.
Pip: Let's start with things that move without being touched.
Psychokinesis: From Table Tipping to Large-Scale PK
Mara: The question this territory is asking is whether the mind can directly influence physical matter — and if so, at what scale, and how would you even test it?
Pip: The table levitations post sets the historical baseline. Nineteenth-century spiritualist gatherings, hands lightly placed, tables rocking. The post notes that researchers studied these claims and concluded "many cases could be explained by unconscious muscular movements exerted by the participants."
Mara: That's the ideomotor effect — people producing small muscle movements without conscious awareness, and those movements combining across multiple participants into something that looks dramatic but isn't.
Pip: So the séance table was basically a group ouija board running on collective fidgeting. Scientifically humbling, but also kind of elegant.
Mara: The large-scale PK post extends this into much bigger claimed effects — weather modification, disruptions to power grids and electronic systems, and collective consciousness influencing random number generators, as in the Global Consciousness Project. These are called macro-PK claims when effects extend beyond localized environments.
Pip: And then there's micro-PK, which is the quieter end of the spectrum — subtle statistical influences on random number generators, radioactive decay, quantum-level events. Not visible to the naked eye, detectable only across many trials.
Mara: The micro-PK post is careful to note that mainstream science attributes reported effects to statistical fluctuations, experimental error, and publication bias. The evidence hasn't met the bar for replication required for scientific acceptance, though parapsychology researchers continue investigating.
Mara: The scale question matters — from a table tilting in a Victorian parlor to weather anomalies to dice outcomes — it's the same underlying hypothesis about consciousness and matter, just tested at very different levels.
Pip: Which raises the question of what counts as a psychic experience in the first place.
Psychic Experience and the Question of Non-Human Intelligences
Mara: The psychic phenomena post maps the full terrain — telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing, mediumship — and offers a working definition: "experiences or alleged abilities involving the acquisition of information or influence that appear to occur outside the currently recognized mechanisms of the six senses or known physical processes."
Pip: That's a carefully neutral framing. It doesn't claim proof, but it doesn't dismiss the reports either.
Mara: Right — and the post is honest that psychological processes like pattern recognition, confirmation bias, and unconscious social cue detection can account for many experiences that feel psychic. The open question is whether any remainder survives that explanation.
Pip: The non-human intelligences post pushes into stranger territory. NHIs are hypothesized entities — spirit intelligences, extraterrestrial or interdimensional beings, collective consciousnesses — believed by some researchers to interact with people through psychic means.
Mara: Associated experiences include telepathic communication, apparitions, UAP encounters, and near-death experiences. No scientific consensus that NHIs exist, but the concept sits at the intersection of parapsychology, ufology, and consciousness studies, and the post treats it as a live research question rather than a closed one.
Pip: And there's a podcast episode in this batch — Psi, UAPs, and Consciousness — that pulls these threads together directly, which tells you something about how seriously this library takes the overlap.
Mara: Both posts land in the same place: whether these experiences represent independent intelligences, aspects of human consciousness, or something else remains genuinely open.
Pip: From entities that may or may not exist, to experiences that are very much real — and need clinical attention.
When the Mind Hears What Isn't There
Mara: The auditory hallucinations post is clinical and direct: these are "hearing sounds, voices, music, or noises that are not actually present in the environment," ranging from simple buzzing or ringing to complex voices.
Pip: The causes run wide — schizophrenia, severe depression, sleep deprivation, substance use, epilepsy, dementia, even high fever. The post is explicit that treatment depends on identifying the cause, and that persistent or distressing experiences warrant professional evaluation.
Mara: The warning signs flagged are specific: voices commanding harmful actions, difficulty distinguishing hallucination from reality, sudden onset with medical symptoms. The post directs anyone in that situation to seek urgent help immediately.
Pip: From tables lifting in Victorian parlors to statistical anomalies in random number generators to voices that need a clinician — it's a wide library.
Mara: The common thread is taking unusual experience seriously enough to ask the right questions. More from the library next time.
Place Related Apparitions are reports of seeing, hearing, or sensing a presence that appears to be connected to a specific location rather than to a particular living person or witness.
In psychical research and folklore, these experiences are often described as recurring phenomena associated with a physical location, house, battlefield, castle, hospital, road, or other site.
Common Characteristics
The apparition is repeatedly reported in the same location.
It often appears to follow the same pattern or behavior.
It may seem unaware of observers.
Witnesses may report visual sightings, sounds, voices, footsteps, or a sensed presence.
Reports sometimes persist across many years or generations.
Examples
A figure repeatedly seen walking down a particular staircase.
A soldier reportedly appearing on a historic battlefield.
Sounds of footsteps or voices heard in a specific building.
As an example: A “lady in white” reported at the same location by multiple witnesses.
Parapsychological Interpretations
Researchers in parapsychology have proposed several explanations:
Residual Haunting Theory
The location somehow “records” past events, which are later replayed under certain conditions.
The apparition is not considered conscious or interactive.
Survival Hypothesis
The apparition represents the continued existence of a deceased person’s consciousness.
The entity may occasionally interact with witnesses.
Psi Based Explanations
Witnesses may unconsciously obtain information through psychic processes and construct an apparition experience.
This is sometimes related to the Super-Psi hypothesis.
Environmental Theories
Certain environmental conditions (lighting, acoustics, electromagnetic fields, expectation, suggestion) may contribute to unusual experiences.
Psychological Perspectives
Some Psychologists may examine:
Perception and misperception
Memory reconstruction
Suggestion and expectation
Emotional significance of places
Cultural beliefs about haunted locations
These explanations do not necessarily imply that witnesses are imagining the experience; rather, they explore how normal cognitive processes may contribute to unusual perceptions.
Research Status
Within science, there is no generally accepted evidence that place related apparitions are caused by spirits or surviving consciousness. However, such experiences remain an active area of study within the fields of parapsychology, anomalistic psychology, and consciousness research.
Place related apparitions are particularly interesting because they raise the question of whether certain locations may become associated with recurring anomalous experiences, regardless of who the witness is.
Phantasms of the Living is the title of a book by members of the Society for Psychical Research.
What Does “Phantasms of the Living” Mean?
The term refers to apparitions, visions, or sensory experiences of living people, rather than spirits of the dead. The authors collected hundreds of reports in which a person claimed to see, hear, or sense someone who was actually alive but often far away.
Examples included:
Seeing a distant relative suddenly appear in a room.
Hearing the voice of a living person when they were not physically present.
Experiencing a vivid impression of someone during a crisis.
Crisis Apparitions
Some cases involved what researchers called crisis apparitions, experiences occurring when the person perceived was undergoing a serious event such as:
An accident
Severe illness
Emotional distress
Death or near death situations
The researchers wondered whether these experiences might reflect some form of telepathic communication rather than spirit visitation.
Interpretation
Some proposed that some apparitions of living persons might be explained by:
Telepathy (mind to mind influence)
Unconscious psychological processes
Coincidence in some cases
They did not claim that all reports proved paranormal phenomena, but they argued that certain cases deserved scientific investigation.
Modern Perspectives
Today, some psychologists might explain such experiences through factors such as:
Memory distortions
Expectation and suggestion
Stress and emotional arousal
Sleep-related experiences
Coincidence and selective recall
Parapsychologists, however, still regard Phantasms of the Living as a landmark work because it was one of the first systematic attempts to collect and analyze spontaneous apparition reports.
Historical Importance
The book remains influential in:
Parapsychology
Psychical Research
Studies of apparitions and anomalous experiences
Research on telepathy and consciousness
For some historians, Phantasms of the Living represents the beginning of large-scale, evidence gathering research into spontaneous paranormal experiences rather than relying solely on folklore or anecdotal ghost stories.
Apparitions are experiences in which a person perceives a figure, presence, or image that appears real but may not be explained by an obvious physical source. Apparitions may often be described as seeing a deceased person, a living person who is not physically present, an unknown figure, or a non-human entity.
Types of Apparitions
Crisis Apparitions
Reported when someone appears to another person during a time of extreme danger, illness, or death.
The apparition may be later linked to a real-life crisis occurring at the same time.
Bereavement Apparitions
Experienced after the death of a loved one.
The experiencer may see, hear, sense, or even feel the presence of the deceased.
These experiences are relatively common among grieving individuals and do not necessarily indicate mental illness.
Place Related Apparitions
Apparitions reported repeatedly in a particular location.
Commonly associated with “haunted” places.
Living Person Apparitions
Reports of seeing someone who is alive but physically elsewhere.
Sometimes called “phantasms of the living” in parapsychological literature.
Scientific Explanations
Psychologists and neuroscientists have proposed several explanations:
Misinterpretation of sensory information: (shadows, reflections, low light).
Expectation and suggestion: influencing perception.
Grief related experiences: especially after a significant loss.
Sleep related phenomena: such as hypnagogic (falling asleep) or hypnopompic (waking up) hallucinations.
Stress, fatigue, trauma, or certain neurological conditions: consult with a Nuerologist, may also contribute to apparition like experiences.
Parapsychological Perspectives
Within the field of Parapsychology, apparitions have been studied as potential evidence for:
Telepathic communication.
Survival of consciousness after death.
Unknown aspects of human consciousness.
Interactions with non-physical entities.
Researchers associated with the Society for Psychical Research collected thousands of apparition reports and attempted to analyze patterns statistically and historically.
Are Apparitions Evidence of Life After Death?
There is currently no scientific consensus that apparitions prove survival after death. Mainstream science generally interprets apparition experiences through psychological, neurological, and environmental factors. However, some researchers in psychical research argue that certain well documented cases remain difficult to explain completely.
Important Distinction
An apparition experience by itself is not the same as a psychotic disorder. Many psychologically healthy people report sensing or seeing the presence of a deceased loved one, particularly during bereavement. Mental health professionals evaluate such experiences based on the broader context, including distress, functioning, and whether other symptoms are present.
In summary, an apparition is a perceived presence or figure that appears real to the experiencer but lacks an immediately identifiable physical source. Interpretations range from normal psychological processes to paranormal or survival of consciousness hypotheses, depending on one’s perspective and the available evidence.
Unquestioned beliefs are ideas, assumptions, or “truths” that a person accepts automatically without examining, testing, or critically reflecting on them.
These beliefs often operate in the background of thinking and may shape emotions, behavior, identity, and relationships without the person fully realizing it.
Common Examples
“If I fail, I am worthless.”
“People cannot be trusted.”
“Strong people never ask for help.”
“My thoughts must be true.”
“Success equals happiness.”
“Everyone is judging me.”
Some unquestioned beliefs come from:
Family upbringing
Culture or religion
Trauma or painful experiences
Social conditioning
Repeated messages from authority figures
Personal interpretations formed early in life
In Psychology
Unquestioned beliefs may be closely related to:
Core beliefs
Cognitive schemas
Assumptions
Implicit biases
For example, in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, therapists may help people identify beliefs they have never challenged, especially beliefs connected to anxiety, depression, shame, or self worth.
A person might believe:
“Because I feel rejected, I am rejected.”
The belief feels factual because it has gone unexamined.
Why They Matter
Unquestioned beliefs may:
Distort perception
Increase emotional suffering
Create rigid thinking
Reinforce fear or avoidance
Influence decision-making unconsciously
But not all unquestioned beliefs are harmful. Some provide stability, meaning, or moral structure.
Signs a Belief May Be “Unquestioned”
It feels “obviously true.”
You react emotionally when it is challenged.
You rarely ask, “Where did this belief come from?”
You assume everyone sees the world the same way.
Contradictory evidence is ignored or dismissed.
Healthy Examination of Beliefs
Questioning beliefs may not mean rejecting everything. It means becoming more aware and reflective.
Helpful questions include:
“What evidence supports this belief?”
“Where did I learn this?”
“Is this always true?”
“Could there be another interpretation?”
“Does this belief help or harm me?”
This process is connected to metacognition, thinking about one’s own thinking, and psychological flexibility.
Consciousness Studies is an interdisciplinary field that investigates the nature of conscious experience how and why we are aware of ourselves, our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and the world around us.
It brings together researchers from several disciplines, including:
Psychology
Neuroscience
Philosophy of Mind
Cognitive Science
Artificial Intelligence
Parapsychology (a controversial and widely accepted field)
Major Questions in Consciousness Studies
Researchers explore questions such as:
What is consciousness?
How does subjective experience arise from mind activity?
What is the relationship between the mind and the consciousness?
Do animals possess consciousness?
Could machines become conscious?
What happens to consciousness during sleep, anesthesia, meditation, or altered states?
The “Hard Problem” of Consciousness
The philosopher David Chalmers coined the term “hard problem of consciousness.”
It asks:
Why does physical mind activity produce subjective experience at all?
For example, neuroscience can identify which mind regions process color, but why the experience of seeing “red” feels the way it does remains an open question.
Major Theories
Some influential theories may include:
Physicalism
Consciousness emerges from physical processes in the mind.
Panpsychism
The view that consciousness, or proto-consciousness, may be a fundamental feature of reality.
Areas of Research
Researchers study:
Attention and awareness
Dreams and lucid dreaming
Meditation and contemplative states
Hypnosis
Near-death experiences, NDA
Altered states of consciousness
Brain injuries and disorders of consciousness: Please Consult with a Neurologist
Psychedelic experiences: May Cause Life Long Hallucinations
Consciousness Studies and Parapsychology
Some consciousness researchers investigate reports of phenomena such as telepathy, psychokinesis (PK), remote viewing, and other anomalous experiences. These topics remain highly controversial because evidence has achieved broad scientific consensus. Mainstream controversial consciousness research generally focuses on phenomena that may be reliably observed and replicated under controlled conditions.
Why It Matters
Consciousness studies addresses one of the deepest questions in science and philosophy:
How does subjective experience arise, and what does it tell us about the nature of mind, and reality?
Despite major advances in neuroscience, consciousness remains one of the most challenging and fascinating subjects in modern inquiry.
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