Chris French

When a mother who lost her son in an accident says, she often hears his footsteps running up the stairs.

when a widower still sets out to coffee cups, every morning out of thirty years of habit, when a grandchild dreams of a grandfather returning to give advice, the supernatural story hears no longer about the other world, it is about a heart dressing its own wounds, seeing the departed return in dreams, hearing their voice on a Sunday morning, sensing a presence at the loneliest times, these experiences are so common among the grieving that psychologists treat them as almost a normal part of mourning not a sign of illness still less proof of the nether world a mind battered by a loss manufactures echoes of the departed the way the body generates heat in the cold it is the last reverberation of love inside the neural tissue and if that is to be called a ghost then it is the only kind of ghost born out of love here modern science holds a remarkably delicate position emeritus prof chris french of the anomalistic psychology research unit at goldsmith's university of london founder and for many years the director of one of britain's most famous laboratories for studying anomalous experiences is the very embodiment of that position his entire career has been devoted to inviting people who report supernatural experiences into the laboratory walking them back through the scene measuring testing analyzing and after hundreds of cases the results always drift in one direction no evidence of the supernatural is found every knock every shadow every midnight phone call when examined under the light of measurement reveals a worldly cause from the misfiring of sleep phases to low frequency vibrations humming out of a broken fan from the fleeting dazzle of light to a fog patch on a window pane and yet the professor says something every skeptic should carve into memory he does not believe in the supernatural but he does not stop others from keeping their beliefs provided those beliefs bring peace and something positive to their lives That remark opens a conciliatory way of seeing science and the soul, and it deserves to be expanded.

Science, in the end, has the task of telling the true from the false, while the soul has the task of surviving the night.

Those two tasks do not oppose each other in every situation.

The risk always recedes.

The prophecy is always right because the unfulfilled day has simply not arrived.

the spirit always needs one more ceremony the small one was insufficient then the medium one then the grand one and each ceremony has its price sceptical science exists not to trample on those who suffer but precisely to be the last foothold for those very people whose pain is already heavy enough without one more layer of loss stacked on top and so the practical advice distilled from this entire journey is not complicated at all with any phenomenon that seems supernatural begin with the simplest questions who else was present who else saw it too was it during exhaustion just after waking during a time of grief is there any recording and if there is what does the recording say when examined closely try opening a window checking the fan replacing the batteries in the measuring device getting a few nights of proper sleep and seeing whether the knocking persists nine out of ten times after that full round of questions the ghost withdraws on its own without any exorcist and with the one case left over that is when science becomes genuinely exciting not when belief ends but there is one last question larger than everything discussed so far and it is the question worth carrying home after these ten minutes would a world where no one believed in ghosts really be a better world the answer is not as easy as it sounds the ghost carries on its shoulders things many modern institutions have failed to carry consolation before death meaning amid randomness companionship for loneliness a ritual for good-bye erase the ghost entirely if such a thing could be done and those functions go with it and humanity does not yet have a complete replacement on the shelf the issue has never been belief or disbelief the issue is how one believes with curious eyes or with closed eyes as a medicine or as a shackle in something that brings peace and positivity to life the kind professor chris french would not stand in the way of or in something that demands a grander offering every month thus the four explanations for the original question have all been walked through allow a final review for completeness the first explanation lies in the brain itself the story-teller that never rests forever filling the gaps in information all the more so in murky conditions and half-sleep and the primed mind finds precisely what it seeks the second lies in millennia of culture and religion the belief in an after-life handed down as a form of psychological heritage together with the craving to control fate's frightening randomness strongest in the places and moments where people hold the least power as the sub saharan survey laid bare the third lies in the deliberate pursuit of fear from the horror cinema to the ouija board to the ghost hunting teams styling themselves as traffic cops for the other side an entire industry supplying safe fear with enormous profit margins presented with very little scepticism and hardly any scientific value exactly as radford warned and the fourth is the emotional explanation the fear of death and the pain of losing a loved one which makes believing that the departed are still somewhere very near bitter but effective medicine one that even the toughest sceptical scientist admits he has no reason to confiscate so long as it brings only peace put the four together and they yield a truth that sounds familiar at first but proves profound unreflection The ghost is a real psychological phenomenon draped over an unevidenced supernatural one.

Calling the ghost false, in the sense that no spirit walks the hallway, is correct.

When you go, you go, but please don't come see me.

Okay, folks, have you ever walked into a room, you suddenly feel this big chill, you're ice cold, that tingling goes down your spine, this odd feeling, and you're thinking for a sec, maybe I'm not alone? Some folks will just brush that off.

They'll say it's the AC, there's a window open somewhere.

Others will embrace it as a spiritual moment, a visit from the otherworldly beyond.

OK, we have summoned a holy sheet of ghost experts and one actual ghost, and they are...

I am Professor Chris French, an American professor at the Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths.

and I'd describe myself as an anomalistic psychologist, which immediately invites the question of, what the hell is anomalistic psychology? It basically focuses on seeing if we can come up with non-paranormal explanations for ostensibly paranormal experiences.

Nice.

it?

Yes, it is, you twillock.

Thank you to our guests, Chris French, Kieran O'Keefe, Izzy Sooty and Larry Rickard.

Next week, we're going to make like a tree and leave.

this reminds me.

So last, last year, first BBC season episodes, we had two Chris's on, um, we had a, uh, Christopher French who, um, he's authored the book, the science of weird shit, um, came, came off.

He's like, everything can be explained, explained by science, everything, you know, exorcisms, anything all can be explained by science.

And then we had, um, Dr. Christopher Bader on, um, who he's been, is it the, There's a very haunted house or place in the UK that's like, I don't remember the name of it, but he kind of looked at it more like maybe the science just isn't there yet.

I think I fall into that.

Yeah.

I think science can explain a lot of it, but I think science maybe isn't there yet on some.

Yeah,

This can make studying the paranormal very difficult.

In a 2009 study headed by anomalistic psychology researcher Chris French, the effects of electromagnetic fields and infrasound, which are sounds that are below the frequency humans can hear, were tested on humans.

These two factors are often blamed for people feeling uneasy in certain locations.

Participants spent 50 minutes in a room that was exposed to EMF infrasound, both or neither, and were asked to note any unusual sensations.

It's the Butch and Sundance Show.

Okay, Sundance, our guest today is Professor Chris French, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths University of London.

He spent decades investigating the stranger side of the human experience.

Ghosts, alien abductions, psychics, near-death experiences, and more.

Yeah.

Uh,

Chris on, on our headstone, it's going to say, we hope Chris French is wrong.

On that note, Chris, when you have demonic possession and the Catholic churches taking that seriously with exorcism and the priests that are dedicated to that process of removing those spirits, what do you make of that?

That's literally the name of the book.

And it's called Science of Weird Shit, Why Our Minds Conjure the Paranormals by Chris French.

So it's a whole book about the psychology of the supernatural, why we go there.

Oh, I think I'm going to need to read that.

And one of the books he came across was out of time.

And then the, uh, waterstones in southampton at one time and um he read it and he knew chris french because he's a fellow psychologist so they all kind of know each other you know in the network they go to psychological uh uh academic conferences and so forth and you know probably university professors in any one discipline, usually know a lot of their colleagues in different universities around the country who were working in the same departments with the same specialities.

And he'd had Chris French at Southampton giving a couple of lectures about anomalistic psychology, um, in the previous few years.

And, uh, he read my book out of time and he asked French if he'd be prepared to debate somebody who, um, written a book about alien abductions and chris didn't know me or my book because he doesn't read about alien abductions he just pronounces what they are from this from complete ignorance um so he said sure i'd do that and so uh i was contacted by dr greg um one time in december 23 and he asked me if i'd be willing to debate christopher french in an open forum he said you know you'll be in a lecture theatre and we'll have students and faculty members there i can't promise you how many or how few they'll be but you know they you'll have an audience and you'll debate in front of an audience and i'll organize the debate and i'll moderate it and you'll have certain amounts of time to speak and then a certain amount of time to respond and it'll be very disciplined And it'd be one evening on a week day because it's, it's, it will be a week day because at the weekend, um, university students sometimes go away, you know, to see their parents or to visit their girlfriends in a different part of the country or whatever, whatever they do.

Um, he said, but on a week, on a week night, there'll be a lot of people there.