Dr. Ken Drinkwater and Dr. Neil Dagnall are both psychology professors from the United Kingdom, Though they are very serious academics they have a shared interest in the paranormal and have done a great deal of research on the subject. They are our guests on this week’s edition of The Paranormal Podcast!

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TRANSCRIPT

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Paranormal Podcast Announcer
This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.

Jim Harold
Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you once again. And as I’ve said in the past, I love when we can talk about anomalous activity, the supernatural, the paranormal, call it what you will, with women and men of science. And today we have two such men on the line. They’re both academes and they are both at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. I’m talking about Ken Drinkwater Dr. Ken Drinkwater, and Dr. Neil Dagnall. And I very much appreciated them coming on a few years back, and I’m so glad to have them on to talk again about what they’re doing in the area of this type of research, maybe some surprises that they found along the way. Dr. Ken Drinkwater is in the MMU department of psychology and is a doctor of Philosophy. And Dr. Neil Dagnall is a reader in applied cognitive psychology. And we’re so glad to have both Ken and Neil back on the program. Gentlemen, Happy New Year to you. And welcome back to the show.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Happy New Year to you, Jim.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Yeah, happy New Year, Jim. Thanks for having us on.

Jim Harold
So let me ask you this, because I think it’s always interesting. And I know that we’ve covered some of this ground last time we talked, but we always have new listeners, I always like to keep that in mind. And since it’s been a while, refresh us on how both of you got into this research. Because, you know, academia sometimes is not maybe the most friendly place for parapsychological research and those sorts of things. So how did you both individually get into it, in how did you come together on this work?

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Well, in terms of in terms of my background, I started off as a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. And Ken was one of our students, weren’t you? Weren’t you Ken, you joined the course? So that gives us just a little bit of history about how we interfaced with each other and that. And after a few years, we had a final year course on the undergraduate degree, which is the BSc Psychology. That was parapsychology. And that was led by a couple of colleagues. But the numbers for the course weren’t particularly great. But it ran from time to time. And I’d always had this interest in the paranormal dating back to things like I think last time, we referred to Scooby Doo, and also Marvel comics with characters like Dr. Strange–

Jim Harold
Sure.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
–the Ghostrider, those sorts of influences. So I was always interested in the paranormal and the occult. And then the opportunity came to teach on the course. So I taught on the course, and then the person leading the course, they retired, so I inherited the course. And then the course absolutely burgeoned in terms of numbers. One year, we had over 120 students, and it was the largest final year option. And the course ran for several years. And as part of that we got interested in demonstrations. And in order to make it interactive for the students, we’d get them to take part in them. And then eventually, we started trying to replicate what other people had found. And the research portfolio then grew accordingly. So that we started doing more papers and became interested in publishing work. Through that period, I then became very busy with administration and Ken had joined the teaching staff having done his PhD. And Ken then took over and assumed the the paranormal mantle, so to speak. So he leads that aspect of our research now. What would you like to add to that Ken?

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
I think I mean, you’ve covered quite a lot for me. So I mean, I think in my sort of remit Jim, I think part of this was to look, in the first place to do the general degree in psychology. And as Neil said, part of the course, one of the units was to do some parapsychology. And then that just led to me sort of considering what to do as an extension of that in postgraduate study. And also my own sort of interest in the anomalous and parapsychological research has stemmed from, you know, my own sort of growing up as it were with ghost stories, and sort of watching films, and reading books, and a whole plethora of things. So, you know, it’s all about my subsequent interpretation, I think, about the behavioral affects and cognitive components, which go into making what parapsychology is today and what the anomalous is.

Jim Harold
Now, let me ask you this, because when you think about people who are in the world of psychology, and again, I’m not expert in it. And–by any means, my–now down the hall, I’d like to, I would have loved to have had my daughter in this conversation, because she was a psychology major with a focus in cognitive psychology. So I should have invited her on the call.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
(Laughs)

Jim Harold
But, you know, certainly not to your gentleman’s level, but she’s a bright–a bright kid, I might say. But aside from that, what I was gonna ask is, you would think of people in psychology, who had to do` a serious study of it being more interested in maybe why people believe in what they believe, why do they believe in things like the paranormal and the supernatural? And one would assume, I think most people would assume that would almost be like a skeptical perspective that, “okay, we’re not saying this stuff exists, but why do people believe in it?” Now it sounds like, definitely, I think, Ken, it sounds like there might been more of also an interest in the phenomenon itself. But really, both of you, where were you when you started in terms of looking at this? Were you just mainly looking at it as, “Why do people believe in this stuff?” Or was there a component of, “We kind of think there’s something to this too, but let’s take a serious academic look at it”?

Dr. Neil Dagnall
And I think that’s a really good question. And as I said before, we’ve always been interested in it separately. I mean, that that was one of the reasons why we’re very good close friends. It’s because we have that underlying interest of all things paranormal and things like Amityville when we were young, they influenced us. So there was always that curiosity. And that fascination with the paranormal, always drew me into the area. Now by nature, yes, I am quite skeptical. And I think the synopsis that you provided where you said, as psychologists were more interested in what the constituents of belief are, and also how those elements of belief, faith, credence in the paranormal, how they relate to psychological constructs, such as individual differences in personality. So that is part of our research, because in order to get published in Psychology Journals, we need to do psychological type work. But I think we’re also interested in it in a more open, more facilitatory way. Because we do know that when people talk about paranormal beliefs, they often ground them in experiences. And they often talk about very strong historical things that have happened to them. So these things have often had a profound effect on them. And also recently, we’ve been doing work with people who think they themselves possess paranormal abilities. So we have to be very sensitive as well, to the fact that people do believe in the paranormal, they do think they have particular facilities and capabilities. So at the same time, although I’m a skeptic, myself, and we do adopt a psychological framework, we do try and be open to other people’s experiences and perceptions. What do you think, Ken?

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Yeah, no, I think that’s a good good synopsis, Neil. I think, from my perspective, it was the nature of the PhD that I did, Jim, which was, which was looking at specifics of belief in the paranormal, and what constitutes people’s belief, and the differences and the similarities between both believers and skeptics, and the nature of the types of all the facets that are contained within the paranormal, you know, so, so haunting, belief, or belief in religion, or, you know, belief in life after death. And there’s a range of factors that we explored. And so that was, I think that was the start of it to be sort of more, I suppose, psychological, and thinking about how we understand those individual differences.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Can I–can I just add to that?

Jim Harold
Sure.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
I was gonna say, Yeah, and also it was part of a voyage of discovery, because when I first started the course, and it shows it shows my age now actually, the internet wasn’t prevalently available to us as a research tool. So we didn’t–we were still using when I started the course, teaching the course–we were still using library based resources so we could get some electronic resources but the web as it was, you couldn’t go on there and get a wealth of material about the paranormal. So much of it was about exploring how academics had looked at the paranormal previously, and then trying to extend and develop that framework as well.

Jim Harold
Now I have read some things and writing you have both done on the topic of why people believe, for example, in curses, and this idea of maybe there’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy in something like that. That’s, that’s fascinating to me. Can you both talk about that?

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Yeah, of course. And the idea, of course, with the self-fulfilling prophecy, is that people can inadvertently lull themselves into realizing the destination. So for example, if somebody thinks they’re cursed, what may happen is, unconsciously, they might then start to ignore, overlook positive possibilities, and then dwell on more negative outcomes. And that’s what a self-fulfilling prophecy is, it’s that people inadvertently end up, if you like, manufacturing their own destiny to match their expectations. And there was in the UK, Darren Brown, who was a famous illusionist, he did a little TV show, which was–it was loosely called an experiment, but it’s a fascinating program. And what he did was, he said that there was this lucky dog in a park in Todmorden. Now, of course, the dog had no associations with the paranormal whatsoever. But as gossip and tales spread across the village, people started touching the dog. And then they would recount the tales. So the lucky dog that wasn’t lucky became lucky. And that’s an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy in the same way. Within the same program, they looked at a pair of brothers, one of the brothers was unlucky, or he regarded himself as unlucky. And when presented with a series of opportunities to be fortunate, he overlooked them, he missed them. So that’s–that’s basically how we can also contextualize to a degree, some aspects of curses

Jim Harold
Ken?

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
I was actually gonna add to that, I was gonna say, I think part of it, Jim, as well as this, this way in which we might endorse certain curses or certain positives, so it’s a positive and negative thing. So it might be about actually avoiding something which we think is actually going to cause us some harm. And it’s this, this desire to make sense of the world, which I think is really important for people interpreting what they think, what they mean by a curse, what they mean by, you know, some sort of hex. And it can become some sort of way in which we might ascribe to the term chaos, I suppose, specifically, it’s to do with a tendency for us to find meaning in patterns. And the great thing, I always talk about Michael Shermer being a component of understanding this and explaining it to us, but it’s about finding meaningless noise. And some people call it apophenia, or patternicity. So what tends to happen is people will find an attribute certain things, which they can then explain or justify the rationale with a curse. And it’s the link between some random events, and they’re wrongly, you know, attributing misfortune to these things. So that’s the kind of thing that I’d be sort of basing it on.

Jim Harold
Now, let me ask you this. And I’ll play devil’s advocate in a way.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
(Laughs)

Jim Harold
To a point though. Just because some curses, for example, and you can fill in the blank ghosts, whatever it is, some curses do not have a factual reality, that they’re rationally explained just as you have done. And that certainly, probably quite a few fall into the categories that we just discussed. But that wouldn’t necessarily preclude the possibility of an actual curse. Is that right?

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Yeah, and that’s one of the things that we’re always conscious of is the fact that we–just because we can explain something by psychological means, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a paranormal element to it. It’s just that we’re using that scientific framework. I mean, I was watching the documentary that James Randi did a few years ago, where much of his argument was based on the supposition that he could produce the same sorts of phenomena that people who claim to be psychic or had paranormal abilities, he could do them by conventional means, and that–that cast doubt about the veracity of their supernatural nature. So we’re in the, in the same area as that really, where we always have to be open to the possibility. And there are a number of researchers who are, that there are underlying paranormal elements to some of the things that we look at and research.

Jim Harold
I want to play skeptic against myself here. And again, I think you both know, from listening to the shows for years, you know my perspective. I am what I call a skeptical believer and the other–in the sense that you know, any one case you know, you want to know more, but I do believe that supernatural things exist. But I don’t–it’s the old, open mind, but you don’t let your brains fall out, not so much.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
(Laughs)

Dr. Neil Dagnall
(Laughs)

Jim Harold
But, but I’ve always kind of adhered to a little bit of the law of attraction, a little bit of the the secret–what many people call the secret in more modern repackaging. But I’m, in my own life, when I’ve thought positive things, and I’ve been kind of a happy warrior. And for example, my jobs, you know, when I go into a job that I’ve had over the years, and now doing this, for well, this will be my, June will be my 10th anniversary doing this full time, I have a very positive thoughts about this. And this has gone better for me than anything I’ve ever done in my life professionally. And I can remember other jobs, where, you know, I didn’t have such a good attitude, and they didn’t go nearly as well. I always thought that I worked hard, and I put in good effort. But I never saw the results I wanted to see. So someone who would believe in the law of attraction, I think, would say, “Well, yeah, because you know, you get back from the universe what you put in.” Now under kind of the framework of what we just talked about, another possibility is that maybe I worked a little harder at this job. I was more positive, so that made me happier in my work, and I did better work. Maybe this job is something I’m a little more suited to than what I was doing before? So, you know, in a case like that, I mean, what do you all look at in terms of saying–I’m not saying my case, specifically–but that actually, your actions and your thoughts about–and your cognitive approach to how you look at and work through a situation in life has a lot to do with it. And it doesn’t really have as much to do with the law of attraction?

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
I suppose, Jim. So, sorry Neil, I think it’s to do with perhaps personal relevance. In the context of what, you know, with hindsight, we look back at certain roles, or positions, or avenues that were closed off, and others that were open, it’s that interpretation, isn’t it, of sort of what was passed and what’s new. And when we’re moving forward, this idea of, you know, reaping what we sow, I mean, I often joke with Neil about, you know, the idea that you can, you can be positive in certain circles, and you can control the controllables, but you can’t control everything. And part of it is then looking at this personal sort of relevance, then understanding the significance of, say general misfortune because we can interpret things and say, you know, as one door closes, another one opens, I mean, there’s hundreds of these sorts of sayings. But it’s how we interpret our path as we go through life, you know, there’s certain things that we might, you know, find we’ve reached an achievable, and when we’re realistic about what we did, like you were doing then, being realistic about your appraisal of your–your own performance in certain roles. But it might be that it was not down to you, it was–it was a controllable you couldn’t control, and something else happened, which led you to a different path. But ssorry Neil, were you going to say something, sorry.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
No, no, no, I think that was an interesting exposition there, Ken. No, all that was all I would add to that is, is that one of the great flaws within much of the research–and this, this applies to believers and to experiencers–is the idea that things are black and white, or they’re binary, because no matter how scientific, or rigorous, or rational we think we are, or alternatively, no matter how subjective and how anecdotal, or anecdotally driven we are, we will still have tendencies towards the other. And one of the, one of the great paradigms that we’ve used to look at research and, you know, we’ve just borrowed it from other people such as Seymour Epstein, is geoprocessing theory. And that’s the idea that within all of us, there’s these two types of thinking. There’s that rational side, and there’s the more subjective side, there’s the analytical versus the anecdotal. And we were a blend of those things, Jim. So as Ken said before, we can revisit our life histories, and we can, if you like, we can almost argue with ourselves, and at times, be almost paranormal, and think, “Ah, that was always fated to happen, that was always cursed to happen,” and yet, in other aspects, we can sit down and we can say, “Oh, no, that didn’t happen for the following reasons,” and consider it in a different, more critical way. So I think those sorts of blends of thinking styles and conclusions, just typical of the human disposition.

Jim Harold
Well we’re having an fascinating conversation with Dr. Ken Drinkwater and Dr. Neil Dagnall about psychology, and the belief in the supernatural, and we will have more on the Paranormal Podcast right after this.

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If you love the Paranormal Podcast, be sure to check out Jim Harold’s Campfire, where ordinary people share their extraordinary stories of ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and terrifying encounters. Find it for free wherever you listen to this podcast. Tune into Jim Harold’s Campfire today. Now we return to the Paranormal Podcast.

Jim Harold
We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast. Our guests are Dr. Neil Dagnall and Dr. Ken Drinkwater. They are academes and psychology researchers who look into the belief of the paranormal and the supernatural, why people believe things like that fascinating conversation. A little bit different than what we usually do, but I love throwing everybody a curveball, to use an American expression–

Dr. Neil Dagnall
(Laughs)

Jim Harold
–every once in a while and doing something a little bit different. Maybe looking at things a little more on the skeptical side, but certainly these gentlemen seem to be, in my dealings with them, always very fair and open to other possibilities, and I love that, I love being able to see both sides of the coin. Now one thing that is one of the most fascinating things to me in all of this, in all the programs I’ve ever done, are the subject of NDEs, near death experiences. Now I know you have done some–both of you have done some writing on this topic. Now here’s where I come from on this, is that, again, I never say personally that any phenomena is 100% quote paranormal or 100% hard science. I think there’s probably a mix. I think that maybe some people who think they have a near death experience did not, maybe it’s a chemical reaction in the brain or something, but there are things that go along with near death experiences that make me think there really is something supernatural to these. But what–what I think is not important here. What did you all find?

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Well I was just gonna say–Neil?

Dr. Neil Dagnall
No, go on, sorry, after you.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
It’s really an interesting topic, isn’t it, Jim? I totally agree with you. I think it’s nice to hear two sides of the coin. I kind of think, you know, you could look at it one way and say, it’s a traumatic event, it’s perhaps a profound psychological event that’s occurred. And it creates what we think of some sort of, you know, mystical element or mystic experience, you know, and it’s typically, for people that are close to death, in terms of an NDE. I suppose the situation can be extremely intense. It has physical, emotional sort of trauma or pain. And I suppose even during, some meditation people can often reach this sort of, this position of, this level of loss of consciousness. But I think really, these these kind of characteristics really give us this feeling that there’s something beyond this world, you know, people have described them seeing a light and moving towards something and coming back and looking down on themselves from above the, you know, within the room, the operating theatre. And I think that really, it’s about, you know, including the sorts of feelings and the way in which they’re described. Again, like, you could say, who knows the answer to this? You know, I think people have asked people about their experiences and, and what they mean. Go on, Neil you were going to say something.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Well, I think near death experiences, as you say, they are an interesting, you know, a fascinating topic. But again, when we, when we look at them, we we end up being more interested in them from that very instrumental, operational fashion of looking at how they’re measured, how the measurement tools align. So whether people are getting consistent responses that are typical of the experience of a near death experience. So we are constrained with some of the work we do, Particularly that sort of topic, because obviously we can’t test the survival hypothesis, the notion that some part of us exists beyond death is outside of the limits of much of the research that we do, we would be considered to be outside those basic limiting principles. So that’s one of the great flaws of science, as you quite rightly pointed out, Jim, is the fact that science itself is constrained by laws and principles. And it makes it very difficult for us to, to address the subject in a more open way sometimes. And I think near death experiences are one of those areas where all we can do is we can talk about possible psychological and scientific mechanisms that can explain the phenomenon, but at the same time, have to be open to the possibility that there is more than science can currently explain.

Jim Harold
You know, it seems to me that, and I don’t believe that you gentlemen fall into this category, I think there are people, quote true believers who fall into the other category, that it’s all explicable via science, or it’s all supernatural, and never the twain shall meet. And the–something like this is a perfect example. Because it makes perfect sense to me that part of what people experience during a near death experience are chemical reactions in the brain, in the throes of the dying brain, somehow this evolutionary ability to calm oneself, although not all NDEs are possible–or positive, but to calm oneself during the dying process, and those things. I mean, that makes sense to me on one level. But to me, when somebody and this is again, much of it’s anecdotal, but have said, “Okay, I was flatlining and I was suspended over my body and seven people were working on me, and this is one, what this one was doing, and that’s what this one was wearing.” And then they come back and report those things. And they map. I mean, it may be explicable via science, but I don’t think it’s a science of today, certainly. So I often think about something like this, like you would think about a triathlete. Okay? So a triathlete is running, and then suddenly they’re swimming. Okay. Well, perhaps the air and above ground is the science part. But the swimming part is the supernatural part. And they both join and they both work together. And that it’s not one or the other. But it’s both. It’s a continuum that works together. We understand the running part where the guy’s running, but when the person swimming, to use the analogy, we don’t understand it as well. We can’t see as much, we can’t measure him under the waters as well as we can above ground, but that doesn’t mean, you know, if somebody says, “Well, he’s just a runner, he doesn’t swim. I saw him running,” Well, but he goes and he swims and vice versa. “Well, he’s not a runner. I just saw him swimming.” No, he’s a runner too. I think the idea for NDEs, for me at least, that it can be a combination of both makes some kind of sense.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Hmm, no, I agree with you, Jim. I think that’s the that’s the position. I think, Neil and I are probably in the same position as being sort of, I always say, I’m compassionate and compassionate skeptic. I think that makes me someone that can question and ask the validity of certain phenomena and topics, but without wanting to be a debunker. And I don’t have all the answers, and science doesn’t have all the answers. And clearly, like you say, in terms of that analogy, it’s a good one to consider the differences between those two. You know, triathletes, that aspect.

Jim Harold
Yeah, it’s a part of the same experience, the same event, but they’re two totally different kinds of parts of it, even though they work together. I didn’t know, Neil did you have anything to add to that?

Dr. Neil Dagnall
All I was gonna say, was that if we’re not careful, and I don’t–I’m not talking about the–we, Ken or I, or you as well–if you’re not careful, what happens is you become very reductionist, and what one of the things that has informed me as we’ve been going along with our, if you like, voyage of discovery, through the paranormal and the anomalous is to almost, if you like, outline the theories, but then at the same time, criticize and the evaluate the theories, because I remember reading Richard Broughton accounts of poltergeists in a book that he did years ago. And he said, Well, if you look at all these little snapshots, and you put these snapshots together, and you overlap them, like a Venn diagram, they they probably account for, or could explain 99% or 95, whatever it was, of the cases, so they could explain a large proportion of the cases. However, they can’t explain all the cases. And there’s nothing worse for people who have had these experiences or who believe it, to have some psychologist come on, and then say, well, actually, we can explain this using these pap theories.

Jim Harold
Yeah, I understand where you’re coming from. There’s another aspect of this, I’m not sure if you’ve looked at it or not. But here’s a suggestion for a study if you haven’t, um, with near death experiences. It seems like there is a real thread of people who have had near death experiences. And again, this is anecdotal, admittedly, that, in at least a certain percentage of cases, people see it as very life changing, and they then go change their life. Maybe they get divorced, maybe they change professions. There’s a gentleman here in my American state of Ohio, who has been in the media quite a bit, his name’s Howard Storm, and he kinda lead a very kind of, he was a professor, I think art professor, if i’m not mistaken. He traveled and lived a very bohemian life and kind of, you know, kind of a YOLO life, you only live once kind of life (laughs). And then after his near death experience, he became very religious. I believe he did get a divorce, if I’m remembering correctly, and he dedicated his life to, I think he may be a pastor and to these religious artworks and, and really, totally changed his life. Is that something you’re aware of being extremely common? And have you looked into it? Or might you consider looking into it?

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Well, in terms of, as you said before, near death experiences often are very life affirming. So they make people more appreciative of life itself, existence, and also, they make them tap into their more spiritual and mystical elements. And also, as you said, some people have had negative near death experiences where that made them more anxious. But certainly they are an example of a paranormal experience that generally leads to people feel that–feeling more fulfilled or, or if you like, broadening their horizons in the way that you’ve described them.

Jim Harold
Yeah, I just have always been–that’s, I think people ask me what topics I’m most fascinated by and near death experiences and the afterlife have to be right up there for me because I often make the point on the shows that we might not all see a Bigfoot, or a UFO, or a ghost, or whatever it might be. But I have news, everybody listening to this and hopefully many, many years from now, will take that journey. So I think we all, whether we’re full blown believers or full blown skeptics or somewhere in the middle. We always kind of like at 3am in the night when we can’t sleep being kind of think like, what really happens, what really happens? So I think it’s at a universal topic.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
It is, and that’s the thing. It’s like, is there another side? Is there another side and other sort of–these things are these altering events, giving you some sorts of, you know, sight into this.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
I mean, what one of the things that would be useful, perhaps to just give a little bit of context too, is the fact that not so much–there’s been quite a lot of work on developing near death experience scales. They’re relatively sophisticated, but many of the things we’ve talked about, like belief, they’re not the–although they’re not accepted scientific measurement instruments that researchers use. Sometimes, they’re actually not that good. So in terms of like ghosts and hauntings, or life after death, the measurement instruments that psychologists and social scientists would use to explore, they actually lack a level of sophistication, don’t they Ken?

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Mmm, yeah they do.

Jim Harold
Go ahead.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Well, and that it, to an extent just limits the degree to which people are able to look at the sophisticated nature of these complex occurrences. I mean, that–that was the point I was going to make. Because when you’ve only got a couple of items that are tapping into the idea of life after death, so for example, can you contact people who have passed over? Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the devil? Now there are three items that are part of the paranormal belief scale. And are they really tapping into the sorts of experiences we’ve talked about? No, they’re very reductionist, and very often people who who research into the paranormal–because what we’ve got is we’ve got people who are paranormal researchers. And then we have, say, sociologists, psychologists like ourselves, and psychologists will often only be interested in paranormal belief or near death experience, whatever the construct is, as an adjunct to personality styles, or cognitive perceptual styles. So they don’t really have that sophisticated level of understanding of what belief is. And in order to investigate it, they just take this measure off the shelf. And then that measure is valid, because other psychologists have used it for a number of years. And that’s one of the reasons why we’ve done quite a bit of research looking at how effective the scales are.

Jim Harold
Very good indeed. Very good indeed. And we’re continuing to have a fascinating conversation with Neil Dagnall and Ken Drinkwater. We’re talking about looking at the supernatural and the paranormal, through an academic lens and the belief in these things, and we’ll be back with more right after this on the Paranormal Podcast.

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Subscribe to Jim’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/jimharold for video Campfire stories, interviews, our paranormal quiz game show, and whatever he comes up with next. And be sure to hit that notification bell when you subscribe, so you’ll never miss a video. Now we return to the Paranormal Podcast.

Jim Harold
Welcome back to the Paranormal Podcast. We’re having a great time today. We’re talking with Dr. Ken Drinkwater and Dr. Neil Dagnall, and they are talking to us from the UK. They are both from Manchester Metropolitan University, and in the area of psychology looking at belief in the paranormal and the supernatural through an academic lens. And we really appreciate them because these are gentlemen who are certainly academics, they’re very serious in what they do. But they also leave the door open for all possibilities. And that’s really–that’s really I think, a great way to be, you know, I think that it’s great when you have somebody that’s more on the believer side, but they still have a little bit of skepticism in them and can still look at things you know skeptically and say, “Well, maybe this isn’t a ghost or this isn’t x.” And on the other side, conversely, I enjoy it when people are more on the academic side, leave space open for the unknown and the unexplained, and these gentlemen certainly do. Now, Ken and Neil, here’s a topic that I know you’ve done some writing on, and I lean towards skepticism, but there’s just enough in it that makes me go, hmm, there might be something to it. The Mandela Effect, this idea that, you know, you remember a title of a movie, or a logo, or something like that from your childhood, and then all of a sudden, it’s different. You know, has the universe done a switch-o change-o on all of us and changed the way that we spell Berenstain Bears or whatever the case may be? Or people believe that Nelson Mandela died well before he did. They remembered that he died. But he didn’t, thus the Mandela Effect. Can you talk to us a little bit about your work and why you decided to tackle the idea of the Mandela Effect?

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Well, we did some work looking at the Mandela Effect. It was less academic and more about just researching the topic. So it was more about looking at the history of it and the sorts of effects that people were reporting, and then contextualizing it within a psychological lens stroke framework. And it was really interesting, because as we were going, as we went through it, we actually had discussions about sorts of things that we remembered. And it was interesting, because, again, as with the other things we’ve talked about, you could explain them in terms of social psychology effects where misinformation was widely disseminated, you could also talk about them as errors in memory, about them being governed by general principles, so that we assume that things are one way, and then only later, when we find out it’s another way, it seems very startling. One of the other things about the Mandela Effect as well, was it was something that one could relate to, because very often I remember thinking, “Hasn’t such and such died?” And then a few years later, it pops up on the news or the internet. And it says, “such and such has now passed away,” and you think, “Gosh, I thought they died years ago. Gosh, that’s–” so it’s quite surprising and startling when people’s perceptions of how the world are when they’re challenged. And from that perspective, again, the Mandela Effect is very, very interesting. I don’t know what you think Ken.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Well, yeah, to add to that, I was gonna say that it’s really to do with, I think it’s about memory, or false memory, you know, so that we obviously were mistaken about something we’ve stored. We then combed it, and then we’ve retrieved it, but we–we’ve created that memory in terms of our working memory. And then we’ve–we’ve posited that as it being an accurate representation of something that isn’t accurate. And I think part of it is about how we’ve distorted perhaps some of our existing memories. But again, we can claim that there’s things that we’ve, we’ve seen and claimed to remember one way which you’ve changed, you know, and it’s kind of an unconscious manufacturering.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Yeah, I was just gonna say I was very strongly influenced by the work of Frederick Bartlett because obviously a very classic memory researcher with the famous tale of the ghost, what, of the Eskimo folk tale. When Western students were told, when that was recounted to them, this–this tale about–and it’s quite an elaborate tale that doesn’t make much sense to us because the way it’s phrased. When people recall that and we’re asked to narrate it back, they changed it after meaning. So in order to make this this meaningful, they changed it, they reconstructed it. And they also did that in terms of their own frames of reference. And again, that was one of the things that resonated with the Mandela Effect, was that I could see very strong elements of what Bartlett had described in his classic texts within the Mandela Effect. The other thing about the Mandela Effect that’s quite interesting is that people become quite passionate about it, don’t they? So for example, when you’re saying, “Well, no, you know, you can use psychological explanations to to explain how this has happened.” And they’ll they’ll be adamant that there is some sort of Metaverse, that things have actually changed. And, and that’s one of the, shall we say, I find that interesting. I find it you know, I do enjoy some of the discussions around it.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Well, I do as well. So Neil, I was gonna say is this, this notion that people can actually time travel, and the fact that there’s a multiverse, and the fact that things have changed, irreparably or something’s been tinkered with, that now when we revisit that in our memories, or we think of looking at something, it’s now changed, and obviously, you can look at other sciences. So perhaps people are suffering from what we call confabulation. You know, the fact that somebody is convinced that something is real, and they’ve remembered it a certain way, and it’s changed. And then they believe that that’s real. In actual fact, it was–it wasn’t correct in their own memories, and therefore they’ve recalled and created something that isn’t accurate. So there’s lots of different ways of looking at it.

Jim Harold
Well, it’s interesting, because this, again, is another example where I can kind of see both sides, I totally believe in false memories. And I know–and I can’t cite them, but I know there have been studies done on things like eyewitness accounts of crimes and so forth, in studies trying to replicate how accurate people are, and people are horribly inaccurate. And that’s when something has happened to them fairly recently. Let alone you know, remembering how something was spelled or the name of something when they were a kid. And then 30 years later, they’re saying, “Oh, no, it’s always been that way.” I can totally see how that’s just foible of the human mind. On the other hand, on my Campfire show where people call in with their stories of the supernatural, I, I’ve had many stories where I’ve told the person, and I mean it in a very kind and respectful way. Either you’re lying (laughs), or this would seem to be paranormal. For example, here’s an example you talked–I was reminded when you talked about the multiverse. A young woman called in and said, when she was a kid, I think in suburban Atlanta, she had gone out with some friends to play. And they saw this, what looked like–they went through the woods and saw this clearing, and they saw what looked like a very old house. And it had people dressed in period clothing, including a small boy in knee pants, which you wouldn’t have seen, and I think this was in the early 2000s. In the early 2000s in Atlanta, you would not see that, unless it was some kind of recreation. And she claimed that she went out later, with her friends a week or two later. And they went to that same woods and there was a clearing. But when they went up to it, it was just rubble where a house had once been (laughs). Now, now that hints very, again, that would be hard to categorize as, as a false memory. So assuming, and I do believe she was telling the truth, assuming she was telling the truth. It leaves out the possibility for the unknown. So again, I think we come back to many things are inexplicable, and some are not explicable, at least by our science of today.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Yeah, no, I totally agree, Jim. That’s an interesting story. I mean, first of all, I was thinking of time slips, where people have been put through time, you know, and then they seen something and then they go back at a different time, and it’s not there.

Jim Harold
Yeah, yep, exactly, exactly. Now, I want to give you gentlemen, a moment here to talk about the things that you’re currently working on that you’re most excited about in this field.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
One of the things that we’ve done over the last few years, together with James Horan, who has historically done quite a significant body of work in the area of the paranormal and with Brian Lace, who is the director of the Institute for the Study of Religious and Anomalous Experiences, is we’ve done a series of studies, papers around ghosts and haunting. And the idea was because they did a book, multidisciplinary perspectives on hauntings and poltergeists, and it was sort of 20 years had passed. So what we’ve done is we’ve, if you like, revisited some of the classic ideas. And within that framework, we’ve looked at what the typical sorts of experiences people have. And we’ve tried to locate them within a stalking type of type gaslighting perspective, perhaps you’d like to extend on that, Ken?

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Yeah, yeah, so I suppose in terms of the gaslighting, there’s really, because it was quite a prominent term that was in the news about people being gaslighted. Being–certain people can convincing others that they’ve actually seen, or they’re losing their mind, they’ve seen ghosts, whatever. Or on the other side, they’ve been convinced by somebody who’s a skeptic, but they haven’t seen anything, there’s nothing wrong. And you get this sort of gaslighting effect. So we produced this, this paper, examining that. And it led to a range of other sorts of things that we talked about in terms of haunted people syndrome, and sort of paranormal subjectivity and episodes, from people who perhaps had stalking accounts. So we did a lot of sort of research over the last–is it the last two years now,three years?

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Time flies, Ken, I think it’s probably five, four or five years that the whole program of research was because Jim’s idea was to, to put these different ideas together, and to do a sort of multidisciplinary book that appeal to people who were interested in ghosts, people who were interested in the paranormal, psychologists, sociologists, etc. So that embrace a whole range of different perspectives. And there will be a book coming out on that called Ghosted, and we’ve been waiting for ages for it to be published. And again, that was quite interesting, because it was–it was a really, it was such a rich range of research we did because it was about exploring the haunting reality of encounters. And, and as part of that research, we’ve also gone if you like, sideways into other things, and one of the things that we did was to do with tourism, and to look at the sorts of factors that influence feelings of effective feeling, such as enchantment. So why do people go to certain buildings and why do they feel uplifted? Why do they have these mystical experiences? And that was something that, that also coincided with Ken working on a PhD in a different faculty in art and design, where the co-researcher was very interested in how space influences people.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Yeah. And also, we were doing other stuff, looking at dark tourism. So the idea that you visit the all the sites are allegedly haunted, have some sorts of atrocities connected to them. And there’s a morbid fascination, why do people visit that? But it was also in relation to my–well the person we’re talking about Fabrizio in his PhD. It’s to do with generating a kind of a design aspect to this. So how you could either eliminate these things from buildings or designs of new buildings, or you could actually accommodate and create them. So it was kind of a creative and a nullifying effect, but I think he’s partway through that project.

Jim Harold
And that book, I’m looking in Amazon now it says it’s coming out in late March, at least here in the States. Ghosted! Exploring the Haunting Reality of Paranormal Encounters. And it’s interesting that you talk about this haunted people syndrome, because it does seem, to me in talking to experiencers, and again, now, I always say this, but this is anecdotal, it’s not academic by any means. But many people explain having experiences in over multiple decades in multiple locations. So a lot of times it seems to be more of a haunted person than the haunted place.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Yeah.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Yeah. And then that’s, that–that was one of the–that was one of the things, that observation was one of the things that informed some of the papers was looking at the psychological characteristics of what are associated with, if you feel like being a haunted person. Somebody who has, I don’t like to use the word persecution type experiences, but certainly has very strong senses of being followed, happenings, entities, those sorts of factors. Now, again, we’re not trying to–we’re not trying to say that they’re entirely psychological. We’re not trying to dismiss them. But just looking at the sorts of profiles that are associated with those type of experiences is is interesting.

Jim Harold
I think there’s–

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Something–

Jim Harold
certainly–Go ahead.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Something else we were doing as well over the last couple of years, which is coming to its fruition, has been doing some other papers looking at paranormal beliefs and thinking style. And specifically looking at people who are mediums, psychic, spiritualists, and fortune tellers. So we’ve been doing research over the last two or three years, obviously, it’s been extended because of the COVID problem, where we examined, you know, self report measures, we’ve examined people’s executive functions. We’ve looked at–we’ve interviewed probably 12 to 18 different psychics, mediums and get their take on their own self-professed abilities, which I’ve found it’s really insightful and useful in terms of appreciating their perspectives.

Jim Harold
Very interesting, indeed. Very interesting. Indeed. I hope everybody checks out that book, Ghosted! Exploring the Haunted Reality of Paranormal Encounters. And again, it looks like the preorder page is up on Amazon if people want to check that out. Ken and Neil, I could go on and on and on. There’s so much more I want to ask, but it’s, it’s–looking at the clock on the wall, as they say, it’s time for us to wrap up. So, gentlemen, where would you point people if people want to learn more about your research and everything you do?

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Well one of the things, we talked about the book, but we’re, you know, we’re not here to we’re not here to sell copies of the text. And what we’ve done over the years is we’ve made much of our work available. So if you go onto the internet, and you just Google, Neil Dagnall, Ken Drinkwater, you’ll come across many of our papers, because one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve done the accessible pieces via the conversation, we’ve uploaded many of our academic papers in draft form to Research Gate, which is available to people who can access them by academic accounts. And at the same time, we’ve also published quite extensively in open access journals. And open access journals are ones that people can just go onto the internet and read and download the PDFs if they want. And that–that differs from the sort of traditional view of academia where you start to go into dusty libraries, so a lot of that material is available on the internet. And if people are interested, you know, you know, please do please do look at it, share it, you know, email us talk about your experiences, because we really, really do enjoy that.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Frontiers is one of the main areas, Jim, that we publish on. And that’s an open access journal.

Jim Harold
Excellent. Excellent. Well, again, gentlemen, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Dr. Neil Dagnall, Dr. Kenneth Drink`water. Thank you both for being on the program today. A pleasure as always.

Dr. Neil Dagnall
Thank you.

Dr. Ken Drinkwater
Thank you very much, Jim. It’s been a pleasure, and all the best to you and your listeners.

Jim Harold
And thank you for tuning into the Paranormal Podcast. We enjoyed speaking with these great gentlemen and sharing their wisdom with you. If you like the show, please make sure that you rate, review, and follow us on the podcast app of your choice, that helps us so much. Thank you. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody, bye bye.