The statistical analysis of more than 8,000 individuals is clear: believing in ghosts, demons, communication with the dead or alien abductions is strongly correlated with the quality of sleep.
Hervé Poirier, editor-in-chief at the magazine Epsiloon, evokes a British study which shows that the worse one sleeps, the more one believes in paranormal phenomena…
franceinfo: What is it? Explain to us?
Herve Poirier: Do you believe in the existence of ghosts? And demons? Do you believe aliens have ever visited Earth? That you have a soul that will live after your own death? A team of British psychologists asked these questions to 8,853 volunteers. At the same time, they asked them to judge the quality of their night, through a very detailed questionnaire, based on the international classification of sleep disorders.
And the results of the statistical analysis are clear: believing in paranormal phenomena is very clearly correlated with the quality of the nights. In particular, the belief in an afterlife is associated with sleep paralysis – the experience of being unable to perform any movement when falling asleep, or waking up. And visits from aliens, with exploding head syndrome – a loud noise, sometimes with a flash of light, when falling asleep.
How to interpret this? Do we believe it because we sleep badly? Or do we sleep badly because we believe in it?
Very good question, which the study does not make it possible to decide. It goes both ways. It is thus plausible that believing in demons does not help to fall asleep peacefully. And the study shows that, if the belief in life after death increases with the lack of sleep, the most convinced, them, sleep very well – the researchers sense here a calming character of faith.
But, overall, the fact that such varied beliefs are all linked to sleep disorders rather indicates that it is bad nights that cause belief in the paranormal, and not the other way around. This is in line with neurological studies that have been carried out over the past twenty years.
Which have shown, for example, that the dysregulation of the frontal lobe can cause hallucinations, or the feeling of being possessed, that of the limbic system of near-death experiences, abduction by extraterrestrials or precognition, that of the temporo- parietal apparitions of ghosts and exits from the body. This new study shows the importance of sleep in the proper functioning of all these structures.
With the idea therefore that belief in the paranormal ultimately results from a disorder of the brain?
This is the main thesis of all neurologists who work scientifically on the paranormal.