The ease with which seances can create false memories of supernatural events in the minds of believers has been revealed by a study. In an experiment, up to a third of people who attended a fake seance later "remembered" seeing a table levitate - even though infra-red cameras recorded that it remained grounded to the floor. Although the volunteers knew that the seance was set up by university scientists, a fifth reported a strange, ghostly presence during the session. Pyschologists who conducted the experiments said the results, which are reported in the British Journal of Psychology, showed how seance rituals - such as the holding of hands and the darkened room - can create false memories. Although many of the tricks used by fake mediums and spiritualists have been exposed by magicians seances remain popular today.

The researchers, from Hertfordshire University and Liverpool Hope University College, recreated a classic Victorian "dark room" seance in which participants gather around a table with a medium and hold hands.

View: Full Article | Source: The Telegraph

I thought that this was a very interesting article. I can see how the atmosphere of a 'seance' could be spontaneously summoned by somebody (alone in a house, for example, in a tense and fretful mood) even to the point of managing to invent a ghostly presence.

However, the article was a little vague on the not unimportant issue of creating false 'memories' rather than false 'experiences'. It doesn't make it plain whether people believed in the 'supernatural' occurences at the time, or only later. My point is I imagine that it is much easier to make somebody believe that something has happened rather than happening.

Also, we are told that the experimentees were a mixture of 'sceptics and belivers', yet we aren't told firstly the ratio of sceptics to believers, and secondly how these opinions correlated to the results. If all the sceptics didn't believe and all the believers did (which is what I suspect happened), that proves nothing so much as that people always believe what they want to believe.

And I suppose as a corollary to this there runs an argument for saying that including only these two groups of people pretty much invalidates the experiment anyway. Why not have 350 volunteers who don't know either way? You wouldn't do the Pepsi challenge with 100 people who love Pepsi but hate Coke; and 200 people who hate Pepsi but love Coke - and then claim that Coke is more popular...