Where do our beliefs lie?

16th February 2019. Reading Time: 5 minutes General. 1258 page views. 2 comments.

I recently conducted an online survey to get a gauge on what people believed in and what they didn't when it comes to the vast field of the paranormal. Here are the results

Often when I am conducting my research, I find a lot of studies. These are usually conducted by Universities showing graphs and percentages of the number of people that believe in ghosts and different paranormal things. I thought to myself, why not create my own? Now I am fully aware that this survey has many flaws. First of all, it only allowed me to ask a total of 10 questions when I had at least double that to ask. It only let me include yes or no as a response and not a third undecided section which I believe would have changed the results quite a bit. There is nothing to stop someone from completing the survey twice or even multiple times as it is anonymous and doesn't track IP addresses which I actually set up that way so that people could be sure their responses were anonymous. One of the things I have found when it comes to talking about the paranormal is that a lot of people aren't comfortable doing so publicly. When you comment on a public page on Facebook, for example, anyone can see it, and sometimes it is even shown to your news feed. Suddenly you are outed to your friends and family as a paranormal 'weirdo' and it is something you didn't want to know. Maybe your boss or work colleagues who are on Facebook didn't need to know what you like doing on your weekends. I know for me at my son's school, none of the other mums know what I do. I don't specifically hide it, but I don't volunteer it when I meet someone. It is so much easier to just stay silent. That is why I thought using a third-party survey link that was completely anonymous was the best way for anyone to answer the survey. I also can't ignore the bias I expected. Being that I am a paranormal blogger that focuses on the spirit world, my first question: do you believe in ghosts/spirits - well I expected that to have a pretty high yes rate because the people that follow me, obviously have an interest in that area. So not for one minute am I treating this like a properly controlled and measured exercise. It gives me a bit of a snapshot of where people's beliefs lie and to be honest with you, the results surprised me, but also didn't in a way as well. I will explain more about that below, but let's get to the results.

The below information has been collated from 80 survey anonymous responses from all around the world.

To this first question, 75 people responded yes and 5 people responded no making it 93.75% in favour of yes. Of course, this is a difficult question to ask. Some people believe in the activity, but don't believe in the general assumption that a ghost is the soul of a person who was once living.

To this next question, 63 answered yes and 17 answered no making it 78.75% in favour of UFOs and ETs. This as well can be a double-handed question. A UFO is an unidentified flying object. If we don't know what it is, it makes it unidentified. The general assumption here is that a UFO is something that is not of this world and associated with aliens or Extraterrestrials. I found the results of this to be surprising to be honest. For myself, I feel like being that we are just a tiny dot in the entire universe, surely there has to be more out there. I think that sometimes people are influenced by movies and TV where it depicts UFOs invading the earth, abducting humans, and destroying all humanity. I personally expected a higher result with this one so it was interesting.

This was the most surprising result with 37 voting yes and 43 voting no meaning only 46.25% of people believe that there could be these kinds of creatures. People I believe underestimate how this fills a big part of the field called the paranormal.

47 people voted yes with 33 voting no meaning that 58.75% of the respondents believe in mystical creatures and elementals. Following on from the above results with Cryptids, surprisingly, more people believe in mystical creatures more so than something like yowies or bigfoot which I found surprising myself.

52 People believe in demons and demonic possessions while 28 do not. This means 65% of the respondents believe in this. While this in part could be part of religious beliefs, I didn't find this too surprising as there is a tendency for people to lean towards things being 'demonic'.

62 people believe in astral projection with 18 people voting no making it 77.5% in favour of astral projection.

65 people voted yes for reincarnation while 15 voted no giving and 81.25% lean towards yes.

In an area I am heavily researching right now, I wasn't surprised to find that 68 people voted for yes meaning that 85% believe in this phenomenon while 12 people voted for no. A lot of people believe this in fact is what causes paranormal activity often interpreted to be a ghost or spirit meaning we are the ghost so I was not surprised to find this figure so high.

73 people voted for yes while 7 voted for no meaning 91.25% believe in this phenomenon. It meant that the next results below surprised me a little.

68 people believe in mediumship while 12 people voted for no. I was surprised with this figure as it comes in at 85% that believe while above, 91% believe in psychic phenomena which are usually associated with psychics or mediums for a better word.

The results in general do make me question how much our belief can influence the way we research and seek the paranormal. If we don't believe in something, we take more of a skeptical approach to our research. When we believe in something, we tend to misinterpret things to fit our own narrative based on our beliefs. I think sometimes as investigators who are often arguing that people need to be more open-minded, that in a lot of ways, we ourselves are close-minded based on what we believe. In the same way, perhaps we believe there is a ghost or spirit, why couldn't there be a creature such a bigfoot? I am not saying that there is, but why are the possibilities any different? Food for thought.

Thank you for participating in this survey it was quite interesting. What do you think of the results? Did anything surprise you?

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Comments

  • Joseph Kapusta 5 years ago

    Great stuff here. What I take away from this is how too many people have a strong opinion based only on media exposure to the phenomena & not on research into the phenomena themselves. They might be surprised to find how many of these have common origins dating back to before recorded history & how they have 'evolved' into the folklore we are exposed to today.

  • Hauntedhistoryjaunt 5 years ago

    Great post and survey! I agree, the results suprised me as well.

    Www.hauntedhistoryjaunts.com