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The "science of weird shit" and making sense of the paranormal

Chris French, who runs the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, explores what lies behind claims of ghosts, aliens and reincarnation in his new book

By Wendy Grossman

1 May 2024

G2C3CA Tree trunk looks like smiling face in golden autumn garden — A cognitive bias called pareidolia leads people to see a face in this tree
Piter Lenk/Alamy

The Science of Weird Shit
Chris French (MIT Press)

DURING a TV show in the early 1990s, a man describes waking up in the night with a weight pressing on his chest. He could neither move nor breathe. He says this is the result of a visiting ghost. Later that week, on another TV show, a different man tells a similar story of waking up in the night with a weight on his chest. He, too,…

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