Scientists have shown how and why some people report hearing “dead”

Spiritualistic environments may be more prone to addictive mental activities and unusual auditory experiences at the beginning of life, according to new research.

This could explain why some people and not others eventually adopt spiritualist beliefs and engage in the practice of “hearing the dead,” the Durham University study found.

It is said that mediums who “hear” spirits face clairaudiente communications, rather than clairvoyant (“seeing”) or clairsentient (“feeling” or “feeling”) communications.

The researchers conducted a survey of 65 Clairaudian spiritualists from the National Union of Spiritualists and 143 members of the general population in the largest scientific study on the experiences of Clairaudian environments.

They found that these clergymen have a tendency to absorb – a trait related to immersion in mental or imaginative activities or the experience of altered states of consciousness.

Environments are also more likely to report experiences of unusual hearing, such as hearing voices, which often occur early in life.

Many who experience absorption or hear voices encounter spiritualistic beliefs when looking for the meaning behind or the supernatural significance of their unusual experiences, the researchers said.

The findings are published in the journal Mental health, religion and culture. The research is part of Hearing the Voice – an interdisciplinary hearing study based at Durham University and funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Spiritualism is a religious movement based on the idea that human souls continue to exist after death and communicate with the living through an environment or psyche.

Interest in spiritualism is growing in the UK, with several organizations supporting, training and providing services to practitioners. One of the largest, SNU, claims to serve at least 11,000 members through its training college, churches and centers.

Through their study, the researchers gathered detailed descriptions of how mediums experience the “voices” of the spirit and compared levels of absorption, hallucination, aspects of identity, and belief in the paranormal.

They found that 44.6% of spiritism participants reported hearing the voices of the deceased on a daily basis, and 33.8% reported a clairvoyance experience on the last day.

A large majority (79%) said that experiences of auditory spiritual communication were part of their daily lives, taking place both when they were alone and when they worked as an environment or participated in a spiritualist church.

Although spirits were heard primarily inside the head (65.1%), 31.7% of participants in spiritualism said they experienced spiritual voices coming from both inside and outside the head.

When evaluated on absorption scales, as well as how strongly they believe in the paranormal, spirits scored much higher than members of the general population.

Spiritualists were less likely to care about what others thought of them than people in general, and they also scored higher when it came to pronouncing unusual hallucinatory-like auditory experiences.

Both high levels of absorption and proximity to such auditory phenomena were linked to more frequent clairaudience communication reports, according to the findings.

For the general population, absorption was associated with paranormal belief levels, but there was no significant corresponding link between belief and predisposition to hallucinations.

There was also no difference in levels of superstitious faith or understanding of visual hallucinations between spiritualist and non-spiritualist participants.

Spiritualists reported that they first faced clairaudience at an average age of 21.7 years. However, 18% of spiritualists reported having clairaudient experiences “as long as they could remember,” and 71% did not encounter spiritualism as a religious movement before their first experiences.

Researchers say their findings suggest that social pressure, learning to have specific expectations, or a level of belief in the paranormal that leads to experiences of spiritual communication are not allowed.

In contrast, it appears that some people are uniquely prone to absorption and are more likely to report unusual hearing experiences that occur early in life. For many of these individuals, spiritualist beliefs are embraced because they align significantly with those unique personal experiences.

Lead researcher Dr. Adam Powell, in the Hearing the Voice project and the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University, said: “Our findings say a lot about ‘learning and desire.’ For our participants, the principles of spiritualism seem to make such an extraordinary sense of childhood experiences, as well as the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as practicing environments.

“But all of these experiences may result more from having certain tendencies or early abilities than from simply believing in the ability to contact death if someone tries hard enough.”

Dr. Peter Moseley, co-author of the study at Northumbria University, commented: “Spiritualists tend to report unusual hearing experiences that are positive, start early in life, and are often able to control. Understanding how they develop is important because it could help us understand more about painful or uncontrollable experiences of hearing voices. ”

Durham researchers are now engaged in further investigations into clairaudience and mediumship, working with practitioners to get a more complete picture of what it means to be at the end of these unusual and meaningful experiences.

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