The Paranormal is (Still) Normal: The Sociological Implications of a Survey of Paranormal Experiences in Great Britain

Madeleine Castro, Roger Burrows and Robin Wooffitt

Sociological Research Online, 2014, vol. 19, issue 3, 30-44

Abstract: Historically, there has been limited sociological interest in the paranormal and no systematic study of reported paranormal experiences. There are also few medium-to-large-scale survey results with nationally representative populations focusing on paranormal experiences . This paper provides details of an exploratory survey conducted in 2009 with a nationally representative sample of 4,096 adults aged 16 years and over across Great Britain [1] . Our findings show that 37% of British adults report at least one paranormal experience and that women, those who are middle-aged or individuals resident in the South West are more likely to report such experiences. These results establish incidence levels of reported paranormal experiences in contemporary Britain. We argue also that they merit a more sustained sociological consideration of the paranormal. In this respect we renew and update the robust justification and call for serious research positioning the paranormal as a social phenomenon, originally proposed well over thirty years ago by Greeley (1975) .

Keywords: Paranormal Experiences; Anomalous Experiences; Parapsychology; Sociology of the Paranormal; Geodemographics; MOSAIC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5153/sro.3355 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socres:v:19:y:2014:i:3:p:30-44

DOI: 10.5153/sro.3355

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Sociological Research Online
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().