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Scientists resolve mystery of people 'hearing the dead'.

Why do some people say they 'can hear the dead'? I used to think they 're  trying to cheat others by claiming they 're 'spiritualists'.

They are claiming unusual things but it is different from what I thought, according to new research. The study published in the journal, Mental Health, Religion and Culture (2) found that mediums who "hear" spirits are said to be experiencing clairaudient communications (the postulated ability to hear sounds beyond the range of normal hearing, auditory hallucination), rather than clairvoyant ("seeing" or hallucinating) or clairsentient ("feeling" or "sensing") communications.

While hearing voices can be a symptom of some types of mental health problems, hearing voices is actually quite a common experience and not everyone who hears voices has a mental health problem. Research estimates that around 10% of people have had an experience of hearing voices at some point in their lives (1).

The researchers think  the reason why some people and not others eventually adopt spiritualist beliefs and engage in the practice of "hearing the dead" is that spiritualist mediums might be more prone to immersive mental activities and unusual auditory experiences early in life.

They conducted a survey of 65 clairaudient spiritualist mediums from the Spiritualists` National Union and 143 members of the general population in the largest scientific study into the experiences of clairaudient mediums.

Scientists found that these spiritualists have a proclivity for absorption - a trait linked to immersion in mental or imaginative activities.

Mediums are also are more likely to report experiences of unusual auditory phenomena, like hearing voices, often occurring early in life. Many who experience absorption or hearing voices encounter spiritualist beliefs when searching for the meaning behind, or supernatural significance of, their unusual experiences, the researchers said.

And why do people hear voices or see things?

There is a condition called Schizophrenia which  may result in some combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behaviour that impairs daily functioning, and can be disabling.

Other reasons could be traumatic life experiences, feelings of stress or worry, or mental health problems such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Sometimes, hearing voices can be due to things like lack of sleep, extreme hunger, or due to recreational or prescribed drugs.

 The researchers gathered detailed descriptions of the way that mediums experience spirit `voices` and compared levels of absorption, hallucination-proneness, aspects of identity, and belief in the paranormal.They found that 44.6 per cent of spiritualist participants reported hearing the voices of the deceased on a daily basis, with 33.8 per cent reporting an experience of clairaudience within the last day.

A large majority (79 per cent) said that experiences of auditory spiritual communication were part of their everyday lives, taking place both when they were alone and when they were working as a medium or attending a spiritualist church. Although spirits were primarily heard inside the head (65.1 per cent), 31.7 per cent of spiritualist participants said they experienced spirit voices coming from both inside and outside the head.When rated on scales of absorption, as well as how strongly they believe in the paranormal, spiritualists scored much more highly than members of the general population.

Spiritualists were less likely to care about what others thought of them than people generally, and they also scored more highly for proneness to unusual hallucination-like auditory experiences. Both high levels of absorption and proneness to such auditory phenomena were linked to reports of more frequent clairaudient communications, according to the findings.

These results, the researchers say, suggest that experiencing the 'voices of the dead' is therefore unlikely to be a result of peer pressure, a positive social context, or suggestibility due to belief in the paranormal. Instead, these individuals adopt Spiritualism because it aligns with their experience and is personally meaningful to them.

For the general population, absorption was associated with levels of belief in the paranormal, but there was no significant corresponding link between belief and hallucination-proneness.There was also no difference in levels of superstitious belief or proneness to visual hallucinations between spiritualist and non-spiritualist participants.Spiritualists reported first experiencing clairaudience at an average age of 21.7 years.

However, 18 per cent of spiritualists reported having clairaudient experiences ''for as long as they could remember'' and 71 per cent had not encountered Spiritualism as a religious movement prior to their first experiences.

But all of those experiences may result more from having certain tendencies or early abilities than from simply believing in the possibility of contacting the dead if one tries hard enough.

Spiritualists tend to report unusual auditory experiences which are positive, start early in life and which they are often then able to control. Understanding how these develop is important because it could help us understand more about distressing or non-controllable experiences of hearing voices too.

The finding could help us to better understand the upsetting auditory hallucinations that accompany mental illnesses such as Schizophrenia , the researchers say.

Footnotes:

1. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/h/hearing-voices#:~:text=Thi....

2. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13674676.2020.1793310

https://in.news.yahoo.com/study-explains-why-people-report-19482286...

https://www.wionews.com/science/scientists-resolve-mystery-of-peopl...

  

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According to new research, a predisposition to high levels of absorption in tasks, unusual auditory experiences in childhood, and a high susceptibility to auditory hallucinations all occur more strongly in self-described clairaudient mediums than the general population.

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