Supernatural Narratives
Anomalous experiences cannot normally be studied as they are happening; they are usually spontaneous and so it is not possible for researchers to be there when the experience is taking place. Investigations must, therefore, rely on descriptive accounts made by experients after the event has taken place. This may be referred to as a "narrative", "phenomenological" or "experience-near" approach.
There are, of course, inherent difficulties associated with such an approach. The investigator must:
- Trust that the informant is not attempting to deceive
- Assume that the experient is not distorting his/her account of the experience
- Assume that the experient did not mis-observe his/her experience, and so on
Further problems arise in attempting to discern which elements of the accounts are derived from cultural notions and personal beliefs, and those elements that are derived directly from the anomalous experience itself.
Despite the difficulties, however, narrative accounts represent the majority of the evidence available to researchers with an interest in anomalous experiences. It is therefore necessary to approach the accounts both critically and open mindedly; the researcher must be willing to accept that the experient is relating an experience that, at the very least, was real to themselves, while also being aware of the problems associated with the recollection and transmission of information pertaining to past experience.
Interestingly, despite the inherent problems, narrative accounts of anomalous experiences exhibit a surprising consistency between reports. Strikingly similar elements of anomalous experience narratives often occur independently of one another over vast distances of both time and space, suggesting that there is some form of objectivity to the claims being made.
Case Studies
The following narratives were gathered via correspondences with experients. They represent fairly typical examples of paranormal experience narratives.
UFO Encounter:
"We set up camp in the snow and my husband went to sleep. I was in my sleeping bag with my head outside the tent, watching the stars. A huge round disk appeared that had pastel lights of many colors rotating around a band in the middle. It was very close and hovered over the mountain just above us for over an hour. I tried in every way to wake my husband to no avail. After about an hour, the cone of the mountain began to glow with lights just like the ship and slowly the ship moved toward the cone and eventually went inside. I did not see it come back out and eventually went to sleep. In the morning, I awoke to a very different kind of energy all around us. I woke my husband and as I made breakfast, told him of the experience last night. As I was gesturing a bird came and landed in my hand. I told him to put out his hand and another bird did the same. We were both aware of the soft and very different energy. We kept interacting with the birds for an hour or so and the energy didn’t change."
Out-of-Body Experience
"I had what I believe was an OBE when I was involved in a car crash in February. When the car was about to hit a tree, I felt like I was enveloped in white light and like I went sideways out of the passenger door until the impact was over. After impact, I was back in the driver’s seat."
Trance Mediumship:
"Once off in trance, I'm still very aware of the room but find that I've often 'missed' bits of time. Although I'm used to it now, I found to start with that I'd be convinced only 20 minutes had passed when in reality it had been over an hour. For the first half of the evening I have absolutely no awareness of what's going on externally with the faces. I can't feel anything at all what so ever. Occasionally, I go off into a 'day dream?' mode and visit places and people but not every time. Recently I've started to feel strong energies around me (hot and cold breezes particularly on my legs), usually just before Charlie (or whoever) comes in to talk first.Often now, when they are talking I'll go back into myself and I get a strange sensation of vertigo & being detached from the conversation, not just intellectually but physically as well. As if I'm on the edge of a precipice or inside a vast canyon. It's a sense of scale I think, I feel very small in comparison to something very large."
Visitor Experience:
“I have never had much interest in UFOs, but I did have an experience. One night, I was asleep in bed lying on my back. I was awakened by something standing beside me. It was a small grey being with the typical alien shaped head with large black eyes. Standing behind it was a tall white being in a long cloak. The small grey being put its hand on my arm as if to comfort me. The tall white being turned and walked through the bedroom wall towards the outside yard. I distinctly remember the folds of its cloak swirling and the weight of the fabric. The little grey one mentally told me to turn my head away, which I did. It touched me with something behind my right ear. A sort of electrical feeling, not unpleasant, went through my body and I went back to sleep or lost awareness. The next day, I was pretty creeped out by the whole thing.”
UFO Sighting
"I have witnessed a UFO and by that I mean an object that fits the term. I noticed a triangular craft one clear night. It was not a solid triangle but rather could be said to be a triangular frame that had round dull metal spheres on its underside. Obviously it was low enough for me to make these out and no noise was apparent. It moved quite slowly, stopped dead for about 20 or so seconds, turned a little then proceeded to move away building up speed rapidly to equal that of a fast jet aircraft, but again there was no noise as it did this. I found this interesting rather than shocking."
UFO Encounter:
"We set up camp in the snow and my husband went to sleep. I was in my sleeping bag with my head outside the tent, watching the stars. A huge round disk appeared that had pastel lights of many colors rotating around a band in the middle. It was very close and hovered over the mountain just above us for over an hour. I tried in every way to wake my husband to no avail. After about an hour, the cone of the mountain began to glow with lights just like the ship and slowly the ship moved toward the cone and eventually went inside. I did not see it come back out and eventually went to sleep. In the morning, I awoke to a very different kind of energy all around us. I woke my husband and as I made breakfast, told him of the experience last night. As I was gesturing a bird came and landed in my hand. I told him to put out his hand and another bird did the same. We were both aware of the soft and very different energy. We kept interacting with the birds for an hour or so and the energy didn’t change."
Out-of-Body Experience
"I had what I believe was an OBE when I was involved in a car crash in February. When the car was about to hit a tree, I felt like I was enveloped in white light and like I went sideways out of the passenger door until the impact was over. After impact, I was back in the driver’s seat."
Trance Mediumship:
"Once off in trance, I'm still very aware of the room but find that I've often 'missed' bits of time. Although I'm used to it now, I found to start with that I'd be convinced only 20 minutes had passed when in reality it had been over an hour. For the first half of the evening I have absolutely no awareness of what's going on externally with the faces. I can't feel anything at all what so ever. Occasionally, I go off into a 'day dream?' mode and visit places and people but not every time. Recently I've started to feel strong energies around me (hot and cold breezes particularly on my legs), usually just before Charlie (or whoever) comes in to talk first.Often now, when they are talking I'll go back into myself and I get a strange sensation of vertigo & being detached from the conversation, not just intellectually but physically as well. As if I'm on the edge of a precipice or inside a vast canyon. It's a sense of scale I think, I feel very small in comparison to something very large."
Visitor Experience:
“I have never had much interest in UFOs, but I did have an experience. One night, I was asleep in bed lying on my back. I was awakened by something standing beside me. It was a small grey being with the typical alien shaped head with large black eyes. Standing behind it was a tall white being in a long cloak. The small grey being put its hand on my arm as if to comfort me. The tall white being turned and walked through the bedroom wall towards the outside yard. I distinctly remember the folds of its cloak swirling and the weight of the fabric. The little grey one mentally told me to turn my head away, which I did. It touched me with something behind my right ear. A sort of electrical feeling, not unpleasant, went through my body and I went back to sleep or lost awareness. The next day, I was pretty creeped out by the whole thing.”
UFO Sighting
"I have witnessed a UFO and by that I mean an object that fits the term. I noticed a triangular craft one clear night. It was not a solid triangle but rather could be said to be a triangular frame that had round dull metal spheres on its underside. Obviously it was low enough for me to make these out and no noise was apparent. It moved quite slowly, stopped dead for about 20 or so seconds, turned a little then proceeded to move away building up speed rapidly to equal that of a fast jet aircraft, but again there was no noise as it did this. I found this interesting rather than shocking."
Accounts from Ethnography
Ethnographic fieldwork, particularly in the form of participant observation, can place anthropologists in direct contact with systems of practices and beliefs that lie outside of their own cultural and personal world-view; to worlds of experience not usually perceived outside of a particular culture. The following accounts represent examples of ethnographic accounts which detail experiences not generally accepted as worthy of consideration in the ethnographer's homeculture - the academic world of modern western society.
Ethnographic methodologies are ideal tools for the investigation of the deeper elements of social groups - the experiential core. The everyday life of the individual within a society including anomalous experience, both spontaneous and induced.
Light can be shed on:
Ethnographic methodologies are ideal tools for the investigation of the deeper elements of social groups - the experiential core. The everyday life of the individual within a society including anomalous experience, both spontaneous and induced.
Light can be shed on:
- The phenomenology of the experience; how it is experienced
- How the experience is understood by the individual
- How the experience is interpreted by the individual
- How the experience is interpreted by the wider social group
- How the experience affects the relationship between the experient and the wider social group
Waldemar Bogoras
Cited in Bowie, F. 2002. Anthropology of Religion: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 204
"So we two were left, the shaman and I, in the sleeping room of his underground house. Abra had removed nearly all of his clothing. He took my best American double blanket and placed two corners of it on his own naked shoulders. The other corners he gave me to hold. "Do not let them go!" he warned as he began to crawl out of the sleeping room, which was some ten feet wide. The blanket seemed by some strange power to stick fast to his shoulders. It tightened and I felt the corners that I held on the point of escaping from my hands. I set my feet against a kind of cross beam that ran along the flooring, but the tension of the blanket almost raised me to my feet, entirely against my will. Then all at once I made a sudden movement and dug both my arms, blanket and all, deep behind the wooden frame that supported the skin cover of the sleeping room; I and the sleeping room were practically one. "Now we shall see," said I to myself. The tension continued to increase, and lo, the framed wall rose on both side of me, right and left. The rays of moonshine entered the room and cut athwart the darkness. A flat tank to the right of my, full of water and half dissolved snow, was overturning and the ice cold water was spilling on my knees. A heap of iron pans and dishes and ladels and spoons, on my right, was breaking down with much noise and clangor. I had a feeling that in a moment the whole house would tumble in about my ears, and from a sheer instinct of self preservation I let go of the blanket. It skipped across the space just like a piece of rubber. Then, all at once, I came to myself and looked around. The water tank was in its proper place. Likewise pans and dishes. Everything was just as it should be. The awful old shaman had worked on me by will power and made things look queer."
Sir E.E. Evans-Pritchard
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1976. Witchcraft, Oracles, And Magic Among The Azande. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 11.
Sir E.E. Evans-Pritchard
"I have only once seen witchcraft on its path. I had been sitting late in my hut writing notes. About midnight, before retiring, I took a spear and went for my usual nocturnal stroll. I was walking in the garden at the back of the hut, amongst banana trees, when I noticed a bright light passing at the back of my servant's huts towards the homestead of a man called Tupoi. As this seemed worth investigation I followed its passage until a grass screen obscured the view. I ran quickly through my hut to the other side in order to see where the light was going to, but did not regain sight of it. I knew that only one man, a member of my household, had a lamp that might have given off so bright a light, but next morning he told me that he had neither been out late at night nor had he used his lamp. There did not lack ready informants to tell me that what I had seen was witchcraft. Shortly afterwards, on the same morning, an old relative of Tupoi and an inmate of his household died. This fully explained the light I had seen. I never discovered the real origin, which was possibly a handful of grass lit by someone on his way to defecate, but the coincidence of the direction along which the light moved and the subsequent death accorded well with Zande ideas."
Edith Turner
Turner, E. 1998. Experiencing Ritual. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp.149.
Edith Turner
"And just then, through my tears, the central figure swayed deeply: all leaned forward, this was indeed going to be it. I realised along with them that the barriers were breaking - just as I let go in tears. Something that wanted to be born was now going to be born. Then a certain palpable social integument broke and something calved along with me. I felt the spiritual motion, a tangible feeling of breakthrough going through the whole group. Then Meru fell - the spirit event first and the action afterward...Quite an interval of struggle elapsed while I clapped like one possessed, crouching beside Bill amid a lot of urgent talk, while Singleton pressed Meru's back, guiding and leading out the tooth - Meru's face in a grin of tranced passion, her back quivering rapidly. Suddenly Meru raised her arm, stretched it in liberation, and I saw with my own eyes a giant thing emerging out of the flesh of her back. This thing was a large gray blob about six inches across, a deep gray opaque thing emerging as a sphere. I was amazed - delighted. I still laugh with glee at the realisation of having seen it, the ihamba, and so big! We were all just one in triumph. The gray thing was actually out there, visible, and you could see Singleton's hands working and scrabbling on the back - and then the thing was there no more. Singleton had it in his pouch, pressing it in with his other hand as well. The receiving can was ready; he transferred whatever it was into the can and capped the castor oil leaf and bark lid over it. It was done."
George Borrow
Borrow, G. 1988 [1862]. Wild Wales. Shrewsbury: Livesy Press. pp. 583.
George Borrow C.1843
"Shortly afterwards we came to a hillock of rather a singular shape. "This place sir," said he, "is called Eisteddfa." "Why is it called so?" said I. "Eisteddfa means a place where people sit down." "It does so," said the guide, "and it is called a place of sitting because three men from different quarters of the world once met here, and one proposed that they should sit down." "And did they?" said I. "They did sit; and when they had sat down they told each other their histories." "I should be glad to know what their histories were," said I. "I can't exactly tell you what they were, but I have heard say that there was a great deal in them about the Tylwyth Teg or fairies." "Do you believe in fairies?" said I. "I do, sir; but they are very seldom seen, and when they are they do no harm to anybody. I only wish there were as few corpse-candles as there are Tylwyth Teg, and that they did as little harm." "They foreshow peoples deaths don't they?" said I. "They do, sir; but that's not all the harm they do. They are very dangerous for anybody to meet with. If they bump up against you when you are walking carelessly it's generally all over with you in this world. I'll give you an example: A man returning from market from Llan Eglos to Llan Curig, not far from Pymlimmon, was struck down dead as a horse not long ago by a corpse-candle. It was a rainy, windy night, and the wind and rain were blowing in his face, so that he could not see it, or get out of its way. And yet the candle was not abroad on purpose to kill the man. The business that it was about was to prognosticate the death of a woman who lived near the spot, and whose husband dealt in wool - poor thing! she was dead and buried in less than a fortnight. Ah, master, I wish that corpse-candles were as few and as little dangerous as the Tylwyth Teg or fairies."