Dissertation by Christopher Laursen
PhD Dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2016
In creating the psychokinesis hypothesis, twentieth-century American and British psychical resear... more In creating the psychokinesis hypothesis, twentieth-century American and British psychical researchers, psychoanalysts, and parapsychologists moved the poltergeist away from centuries of religious and spiritual attribution – that it was actions of unseen spirits of the dead, elementals, or demonic forces – into the realm of scientific boundary-work that explored unseen worlds: the human mind, consciousness, and invisible forces and organisms. Boundary-work involved a process of establishing and sustaining ideas that could be presented to the larger scientific community. Poltergeist researchers viewed themselves as pioneers who were expanding scientific knowledge, with a goal of establishing epistemic authority on the phenomenon. While spiritual attributions remained popular, as did suspicions of deceptive behaviour, poltergeist researchers managed to establish the psychokinesis hypothesis as a significant, well-known potential explanation for the poltergeist – one that suggested the human mind could affect the material environment. I argue that collaborative knowledge-making between researchers and the people who directly experienced poltergeist manifestations enabled the psychokinesis hypothesis. To this day, no one is certain what causes the poltergeist phenomenon, and very few individuals actively study it first-hand. The hypothesis was as much a mischievous force in the transformative dynamics of twentieth-century American and British culture and science as the poltergeist itself was in disrupting individual lives.
Chapters and Articles by Christopher Laursen
Believing in Bits: Digital Technology and the Supernatural, 2019
Chapter examines online communities in which participants use heightened states of imagination to... more Chapter examines online communities in which participants use heightened states of imagination to create tulpas, perceived to be independent, self-aware, sentient beings within the participants’ minds and bodies.
Greening the Paranormal: Exploring the Ecology of Extraordinary Experience, 2019
Chapter puts forth a methodology in which people experiencing things they can’t easily explain ca... more Chapter puts forth a methodology in which people experiencing things they can’t easily explain can work on an ongoing basis with off-site interdisciplinary researchers to gather, document, and contextualize events as they happen over an extended period of time. This contrasts research models in which outside researchers spend a limited time on site. The goal is to enhance research relationships and the quality of information and knowledge gathered on the community level.
Super Religion, 2016
Chapter in one of a ten-volume religious studies reference series for general and undergraduate r... more Chapter in one of a ten-volume religious studies reference series for general and undergraduate readers. Outlines the historical significance of the poltergeist as a strange, physical phenomenon in relation to Christian and Islamic beliefs, materiality, and people’s ways of being (ontologies). Offers well-documented case study examples and how they cross over into popular culture.
Damned Facts: Fortean Essays on Religion, Folklore, and the Paranormal, 2016
With co-author Eden French. We examine the American writer Charles Fort’s term “transmediumizers”... more With co-author Eden French. We examine the American writer Charles Fort’s term “transmediumizers” in relation to extraordinary yet marginalized people who disrupt status quos. We focus on how these people historically – and continue to – awaken human potential and changing concepts of what it is to be human.
Ghosts, Spirits, and Psychics: The Paranormal from Alchemy to Zombies, 2015
Contributed four entries to this reference book with 121 entries on topics around the paranormal,... more Contributed four entries to this reference book with 121 entries on topics around the paranormal, intended for general and undergraduate readers. Also helped the editor to find scholarly contributors.
Fortean Times, 2014
Co-authored with the Australian poltergeist researcher Paul Cropper. We review the events from an... more Co-authored with the Australian poltergeist researcher Paul Cropper. We review the events from an 1829-1830 haunting in Upper Canada (now southwestern Ontario) and how it has been reinterpreted over nearly 200 years to the present day. Conducted interviews; visited and photographed historical locations.
Fortean Times, 2014
A review of an international conference in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in which scholars and archiv... more A review of an international conference in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in which scholars and archivists sought ways to preserve documents and media in relation to parapsychological research and extraordinary experiences. With a sidebar on peer-reviewed wikis to learn more on these topics.
Dissertation Reviews, 2013
A review of five archives where I gathered documents for my PhD dissertation on psychological stu... more A review of five archives where I gathered documents for my PhD dissertation on psychological studies of the poltergeist phenomenon, including Duke University’s Rubenstein Library, Cambridge University Library, the University of West Georgia’s Ingram Library, Senate House Library at the University of London, and the Society for Psychical Research Library in London.
Talks by Christopher Laursen
This illustrative lecture explores the responses of British psychical researchers and American pa... more This illustrative lecture explores the responses of British psychical researchers and American parapsychologists to what they often deemed to be “delusions” among those who claimed to experience paranormal phenomenon, as well as how they approached scenarios in which eyewitnesses they were investigating were mentally and emotionally distressed. Through anecdotes, correspondence and essays from the archives of Duke University’s Parapsychological Laboratory, the Society for Psychical Research in London, and peer-reviewed publications from after the Second World War, Laursen shows how researchers either avoided such cases or referred them to general physicians, psychologists, and psychiatrists. By the 1970s, some researchers controversially sought ways to implement their own therapeutic approaches as a means to assist distressed eyewitnesses, including interventions in field investigations and the formation of support groups. Empathetic support strategies expanded as a result, but also remained restricted by credentials, liability, and research objectives. Referrals themselves were, and remain, limited by the availability of orthodox therapists knowledgeable about psi phenomena.
In this presentation, I visually reconstruct a historic poltergeist case that took place in Seafo... more In this presentation, I visually reconstruct a historic poltergeist case that took place in Seaford, Long Island, New York in 1958. This case is particularly meaningful because it saw the emergence of the term recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK) coined by parapsychologist William Roll who investigated the case along with J. Gaither Pratt for Duke University’s Psychical Research Foundation. The theory of RSPK posits that a living person can unconsciously emit an invisible force that unexpectedly moves solid objects and creates peculiar sounds. While this theory did not entirely dislodge the long-standing idea that a discarnate entity or spirit caused the mischievous disruptions, it significantly resituated understandings of the phenomenon to focus on an individual’s potential to produce psi effects (see for example Pratt & Roll, 1958; Roll, 1972; Gauld & Cornell, 1979; Spencer & Spencer, 1997; Roll & Persinger, 2001).
In this presentation, I will project an interactive three-dimensional model of the Seaford household reconstructed from diagrams and photographs made during the investigation. Through it, we will journey through the recorded events, emotional responses, and intellectual debates that took place between February 3rd and March 10th, 1958. This virtual walkthrough will be interspersed with visuals of primary documents, photographs, diagrams, illustrations, material evidence, and press clippings to accentuate the records made of this case study. The aim of this reconstruction is to demonstrate a historical methodology that shows how and why the RSPK theory became so dominant in subsequent poltergeist research.
I will focus on two major themes in this reconstruction. Firstly, I want to show the ways in which a chain of authoritative figures who investigated – extended family, police, the fire department, building inspectors, engineers, newspaper reporters, parapsychologists, etc. – impacted the interpretations made about what was happening. Secondly, I wish to move beyond interpersonal relationships and focus on how individuals related to the objects that were manipulated as part of the phenomenon. Bruno Latour and Michel Callon’s actor-network theory traces how the relationships between individual historical actors – both living people and non-living objects – create specific networks that make scientific knowledge. Taking their approach into consideration, I will emphasize the networks found between animated household objects and the interpretations made by historical actors about the significance of their animation that facilitated Pratt and Roll making psychological connections, which in turn successfully enabled the RSPK theory.
This presentation is part of a larger project which examines how knowledge about the poltergeist was remade in households in which the phenomenon manifested in the decades following the Second World War in the United States and Britain.
After 1945, British psychical researchers and American parapsychologists increasingly addressed m... more After 1945, British psychical researchers and American parapsychologists increasingly addressed mental health issues and personal distress among those who claimed to be experiencing paranormal phenomena. Referral to a medical doctor or psychiatrist was commonly practised and, inspired by psychotherapies, a methodology of empathetic counselling was controversially implemented in some spontaneous case investigations in which witnesses were troubled by what was happening. This paper analyses archived correspondence and essays on therapeutic methodologies in order to trace how researchers debated, developed and employed these strategies. In 1982, Society for Psychical Research (SPR) member and consultant psychiatrist James F. McHarg of the Royal Liff Hospital, Dundee, Scotland, wrote that experients of anomalous phenomena turned to psychical researchers “primarily for help and understanding, rather than for the purpose of scientific enquiry which motivates the SPR field worker.” Rather than encourage “a deliberate diagnostic role” which would be “disastrous,” McHarg aimed to help investigators identify mental disorders such as schizophrenia, hysteria, senility, or epilepsy, which could be in part or entirely responsible for the experiences reported. In those situations, the “correct procedure would be to advise the person concerned to consult his general practitioner, who might then seek specialist neurological or psychiatric advice.” When personal distress was evident, some researchers found that they had the opportunity to offer more direct interventions. In 1974, American parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo argued “we have a responsibility to help those who feel themselves to be affected by psi manifestations with which they cannot cope.” For example, Rogo found that counselling tactics might quell poltergeist manifestations although this did not necessarily resolve witnesses’ psychological issues, a significant point of concern among his colleagues. Empathetic support strategies expanded as a result, but also remained restricted by credentials, liability, and research objectives. Referrals themselves were, and remain, limited by the availability of orthodox therapists knowledgeable about psi phenomena.
This twenty-minute scholarly-musical collaboration examines how people have interpreted technical... more This twenty-minute scholarly-musical collaboration examines how people have interpreted technical anomalies in snapshot photography as something supernatural or divine. Accompanied by live music and interaction with multimedia artist Kristofir Dean, historian Christopher Laursen will analyse the significance of a selection of everyday photographic anomalies from the past several decades that have made significant cultural impacts as evidence of something paranormal in action.
These supernatural interpretations persist despite the fact that photographic technicians, psychical researchers, and scientists have been able to prove repeatedly that the anomaly is merely a technical glitch: hair or camera straps obscuring the lens; dust and pollen particles illuminated by the flash; natural lighting effects; reflections; motion blurs; double exposures; and abstract compositions being interpreted as something otherworldly.
The absurdity emerges with the persistent ignorance of such sound technical explanations by those who continue to interpret and pursue these photographs as proof of the existence of ghosts, psychic powers, religious encounters, and alternate dimensions. Laursen will look at these images in relation to their interpretations, how they were investigated (for example by psychical researchers and photographic technicians), findings of natural causation, and the subsequent reaction of the person(s) who submitted the photograph for investigation. Laursen argues that often these anomalies arise with new photographic technology, for example, Polaroid instant photographs or digital cameras, just as faked “spirit” photographs became immensely popular (and culturally powerful) with the advent of commercial photography in the nineteenth century. Although interpretations may be dogmatic, they simultaneously reveal a deep human desire for confirmation of life after death, psychic potential, and religious beliefs.
Laursen will take the audience through a selection of case studies that exemplify the relationship between everyday photographic anomalies and persistent supernatural interpretations. He will draw on psychical research archives in which film-based and digital anomalies have been examined, testimonials by witnesses, as well as technical documents explaining the causation.
Avant-garde visual artist and musician Kristofir Dean accompanies Laursen on MIDI keyboard and electronic wind instrument (EWI) using Cubase 5 on his laptop. Dean will provide a musical bed as well as critical or abstract commentary to destabilize the historical analyses of these photographic phenomena and how they have been interpreted.
In August 1933, a recently deceased Spanish woman, Lucía Altarez de Salvio, found herself reincar... more In August 1933, a recently deceased Spanish woman, Lucía Altarez de Salvio, found herself reincarnated in the body of a fifteen-year-old Hungarian girl. Accounts describe how the girl, Iris Farczády, had gone into a trance during a Spiritualist séance in an effort to communicate with the dead when Lucía’s spirit possessed her. Even more unusual than her permanent personality transformation was how Iris (as Lucía) exhibited xenoglossy, spontaneously speaking fluent Spanish, a language she had never learned before. I argue that tense relations between psychiatric experts, psychical researchers, and Spiritualists at the time prevented an expert scientific investigation of this rare linguistic phenomenon. Psychiatrists – predominantly occupied with finding biological cures for mental illness during the interwar period – quickly dismissed the case as fraud or mental illness mainly because it occurred in the context of a marginalized, controversial religion.
Most historical studies have focused on cooperative interactions between scientists and Spiritualists during the fin-de-siècle. This paper shows how that collaborative research significantly declined during the interwar period. Rampant fraud committed in the name of Spiritualism during and after the First World War widely discredited the Spiritualist movement, and the Farczády family found themselves negotiating between scientific credibility and religious beliefs in order to satisfy both sceptics and Spiritualists who were critical about the case. In daily newspaper reports, psychiatric expertise critically shaped harsh scepticism about the case and fortified negative attitudes about Spiritualism. The case was quickly relegated to being a hoax by the daily press and largely disappeared from public attention. Iris’s personality transformation remained in the peripheries of Spiritualism – where Iris’s mother deemed it to be a “divine wonder” – and psychical research – where an amateur investigator, Karl Röthy, built the evidence around metaphysical explanation, limited to being published in a small periodical specializing in the paranormal.
Reviews by Christopher Laursen
Interviews by Christopher Laursen
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Dissertation by Christopher Laursen
Chapters and Articles by Christopher Laursen
Talks by Christopher Laursen
In this presentation, I will project an interactive three-dimensional model of the Seaford household reconstructed from diagrams and photographs made during the investigation. Through it, we will journey through the recorded events, emotional responses, and intellectual debates that took place between February 3rd and March 10th, 1958. This virtual walkthrough will be interspersed with visuals of primary documents, photographs, diagrams, illustrations, material evidence, and press clippings to accentuate the records made of this case study. The aim of this reconstruction is to demonstrate a historical methodology that shows how and why the RSPK theory became so dominant in subsequent poltergeist research.
I will focus on two major themes in this reconstruction. Firstly, I want to show the ways in which a chain of authoritative figures who investigated – extended family, police, the fire department, building inspectors, engineers, newspaper reporters, parapsychologists, etc. – impacted the interpretations made about what was happening. Secondly, I wish to move beyond interpersonal relationships and focus on how individuals related to the objects that were manipulated as part of the phenomenon. Bruno Latour and Michel Callon’s actor-network theory traces how the relationships between individual historical actors – both living people and non-living objects – create specific networks that make scientific knowledge. Taking their approach into consideration, I will emphasize the networks found between animated household objects and the interpretations made by historical actors about the significance of their animation that facilitated Pratt and Roll making psychological connections, which in turn successfully enabled the RSPK theory.
This presentation is part of a larger project which examines how knowledge about the poltergeist was remade in households in which the phenomenon manifested in the decades following the Second World War in the United States and Britain.
These supernatural interpretations persist despite the fact that photographic technicians, psychical researchers, and scientists have been able to prove repeatedly that the anomaly is merely a technical glitch: hair or camera straps obscuring the lens; dust and pollen particles illuminated by the flash; natural lighting effects; reflections; motion blurs; double exposures; and abstract compositions being interpreted as something otherworldly.
The absurdity emerges with the persistent ignorance of such sound technical explanations by those who continue to interpret and pursue these photographs as proof of the existence of ghosts, psychic powers, religious encounters, and alternate dimensions. Laursen will look at these images in relation to their interpretations, how they were investigated (for example by psychical researchers and photographic technicians), findings of natural causation, and the subsequent reaction of the person(s) who submitted the photograph for investigation. Laursen argues that often these anomalies arise with new photographic technology, for example, Polaroid instant photographs or digital cameras, just as faked “spirit” photographs became immensely popular (and culturally powerful) with the advent of commercial photography in the nineteenth century. Although interpretations may be dogmatic, they simultaneously reveal a deep human desire for confirmation of life after death, psychic potential, and religious beliefs.
Laursen will take the audience through a selection of case studies that exemplify the relationship between everyday photographic anomalies and persistent supernatural interpretations. He will draw on psychical research archives in which film-based and digital anomalies have been examined, testimonials by witnesses, as well as technical documents explaining the causation.
Avant-garde visual artist and musician Kristofir Dean accompanies Laursen on MIDI keyboard and electronic wind instrument (EWI) using Cubase 5 on his laptop. Dean will provide a musical bed as well as critical or abstract commentary to destabilize the historical analyses of these photographic phenomena and how they have been interpreted.
Most historical studies have focused on cooperative interactions between scientists and Spiritualists during the fin-de-siècle. This paper shows how that collaborative research significantly declined during the interwar period. Rampant fraud committed in the name of Spiritualism during and after the First World War widely discredited the Spiritualist movement, and the Farczády family found themselves negotiating between scientific credibility and religious beliefs in order to satisfy both sceptics and Spiritualists who were critical about the case. In daily newspaper reports, psychiatric expertise critically shaped harsh scepticism about the case and fortified negative attitudes about Spiritualism. The case was quickly relegated to being a hoax by the daily press and largely disappeared from public attention. Iris’s personality transformation remained in the peripheries of Spiritualism – where Iris’s mother deemed it to be a “divine wonder” – and psychical research – where an amateur investigator, Karl Röthy, built the evidence around metaphysical explanation, limited to being published in a small periodical specializing in the paranormal.
Reviews by Christopher Laursen
Interviews by Christopher Laursen
In this presentation, I will project an interactive three-dimensional model of the Seaford household reconstructed from diagrams and photographs made during the investigation. Through it, we will journey through the recorded events, emotional responses, and intellectual debates that took place between February 3rd and March 10th, 1958. This virtual walkthrough will be interspersed with visuals of primary documents, photographs, diagrams, illustrations, material evidence, and press clippings to accentuate the records made of this case study. The aim of this reconstruction is to demonstrate a historical methodology that shows how and why the RSPK theory became so dominant in subsequent poltergeist research.
I will focus on two major themes in this reconstruction. Firstly, I want to show the ways in which a chain of authoritative figures who investigated – extended family, police, the fire department, building inspectors, engineers, newspaper reporters, parapsychologists, etc. – impacted the interpretations made about what was happening. Secondly, I wish to move beyond interpersonal relationships and focus on how individuals related to the objects that were manipulated as part of the phenomenon. Bruno Latour and Michel Callon’s actor-network theory traces how the relationships between individual historical actors – both living people and non-living objects – create specific networks that make scientific knowledge. Taking their approach into consideration, I will emphasize the networks found between animated household objects and the interpretations made by historical actors about the significance of their animation that facilitated Pratt and Roll making psychological connections, which in turn successfully enabled the RSPK theory.
This presentation is part of a larger project which examines how knowledge about the poltergeist was remade in households in which the phenomenon manifested in the decades following the Second World War in the United States and Britain.
These supernatural interpretations persist despite the fact that photographic technicians, psychical researchers, and scientists have been able to prove repeatedly that the anomaly is merely a technical glitch: hair or camera straps obscuring the lens; dust and pollen particles illuminated by the flash; natural lighting effects; reflections; motion blurs; double exposures; and abstract compositions being interpreted as something otherworldly.
The absurdity emerges with the persistent ignorance of such sound technical explanations by those who continue to interpret and pursue these photographs as proof of the existence of ghosts, psychic powers, religious encounters, and alternate dimensions. Laursen will look at these images in relation to their interpretations, how they were investigated (for example by psychical researchers and photographic technicians), findings of natural causation, and the subsequent reaction of the person(s) who submitted the photograph for investigation. Laursen argues that often these anomalies arise with new photographic technology, for example, Polaroid instant photographs or digital cameras, just as faked “spirit” photographs became immensely popular (and culturally powerful) with the advent of commercial photography in the nineteenth century. Although interpretations may be dogmatic, they simultaneously reveal a deep human desire for confirmation of life after death, psychic potential, and religious beliefs.
Laursen will take the audience through a selection of case studies that exemplify the relationship between everyday photographic anomalies and persistent supernatural interpretations. He will draw on psychical research archives in which film-based and digital anomalies have been examined, testimonials by witnesses, as well as technical documents explaining the causation.
Avant-garde visual artist and musician Kristofir Dean accompanies Laursen on MIDI keyboard and electronic wind instrument (EWI) using Cubase 5 on his laptop. Dean will provide a musical bed as well as critical or abstract commentary to destabilize the historical analyses of these photographic phenomena and how they have been interpreted.
Most historical studies have focused on cooperative interactions between scientists and Spiritualists during the fin-de-siècle. This paper shows how that collaborative research significantly declined during the interwar period. Rampant fraud committed in the name of Spiritualism during and after the First World War widely discredited the Spiritualist movement, and the Farczády family found themselves negotiating between scientific credibility and religious beliefs in order to satisfy both sceptics and Spiritualists who were critical about the case. In daily newspaper reports, psychiatric expertise critically shaped harsh scepticism about the case and fortified negative attitudes about Spiritualism. The case was quickly relegated to being a hoax by the daily press and largely disappeared from public attention. Iris’s personality transformation remained in the peripheries of Spiritualism – where Iris’s mother deemed it to be a “divine wonder” – and psychical research – where an amateur investigator, Karl Röthy, built the evidence around metaphysical explanation, limited to being published in a small periodical specializing in the paranormal.
Greening the Paranormal explores parallels between anomalistics (the study of the paranormal in all its guises, incorporating parapsychology, paranthropology, cryptozoology, religious studies, and so on), and ecology (the study of living systems), not just for the sake of exploring interesting intersections (of which there are many), but for the essential task of contributing towards a much broader – necessary – change of perspective concerning our relationship to the living planet. The chapters collected in this book demonstrate that we have much to learn from exploring the ecology of extraordinary experience.
FEATURING CONTRIBUTIONS FROM:
Paul Devereux, Cody Meyocks, Nancy Wissers, Amba J. Sepie, Lance M. Foster, Jacob W. Glazier, Christine Simmonds-Moore, Mark A. Schroll, Viktória Duda, Maya Ward, Simon Wilson, David Luke, Brian Taylor, Silvia Mutterle, Susan Marsh, Timothy Grieve-Carlson, Elorah Fangrad, Rick Fehr, and Christopher Laursen.
https://www.amazon.com/Greening-Paranormal-Exploring-Extraordinary-Experience/dp/1786771098/