Kate, a woman interviewed by Marcia Jedd for a 1997 article in Fate magazine, insists she recalls periodical visits from “small, gray humanoids” during her childhood. According to her, these creatures would often observe her family at night and, on occasions, they would talk and visit her in her bedroom. Their visits seemed perfectly harmless to her, as the humanoids never tried to hurt her, but once she realized other kids weren’t being visited by these creatures, she started to fear these encounters and kept the memories of these beings to herself while refusing to speak to anyone about them for twenty-eight years. Eventually, with the help of hypnosis, Kate was able to recall other interaction she had had with these creatures, such as her being taken aboard an alien spacecraft and being medically experimented on. Now in her fifties, Kate claims these aliens had been experimenting on her before she was even born.

As unbelievable as Kate’s story may seem, it’s not exactly uncommon. According to a 1991 Roper poll, four million people argue to have had experienced alien abduction, while nineteen million say they’ve seen a UFO. UFO’s, or unidentified flying objects, are one of the many things classified as “paranormal,” which is basically anything lacking a scientific explanation. Whether or not these abduction reports hold any tidbit of truth is what concerns modern day parapsychologists, such as those from the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), who spend their time researching these types of phenomena. Although no concrete evidence on the existence of the paranormal has been found so far, it’s hard not to believe in such a thing when countless stories and possible evidence, such as pictures and strange artifacts, have been encountered.

If at any given point in time you’ve had a strange or “gut feeling” that something bad was going to happen which later proved to be correct, you may have experienced a type of paranormal phenomena known as a “sixth sense.” This is one of the most commonly experienced paranormal phenomenon, even though most people don’t tend to realize it. As a matter of fact,humans are not the only ones believed to have a sixth sense; other animals, such as dogs and dolphins, are also believed to have experience this phenomenon, especially before a natural disaster is at hand.

The belief in the paranormal is a strong factor of the continuing research for its proof. According to paranormal research held by Gallup in 2005, about three in four Americans believe in at least one of the following: ESP, hauntings, ghost/apparitions, telepathy, clairvoyance, using astrology to predict the future, mind reading, communicating with the dead, witches, reincarnation, miracles, or channeling (allowing a “spirit-being” to temporarily take over a body). As one can see, even though no concrete proof for any of the aforementioned topics has been discovered, people still hold firm beliefs in their existence.

It’s human nature to try to prove things true or false, so of course in this case, it’s no different. Some people refuse to believe in the paranormal because of lack of proof and tend dispute any possible evidence by suggesting other explanations that could potentially be backed
up by science. But who’s to say whether something does or doesn’t exist just because no evidence suggesting its existence has been found? Using this form of reasoning, one could argue that God doesn’t exist, since no factual or scientific proof has been found that He actually exist, but about eighty-eight percent of the world’s population still believe in a god or higher power. Because of this, one can assume that people will believe whatever they want, no matter the amount of proof (or lack of proof) there is for the opposing view.

As you can see, the problem with paranormal investigation is that nothing dealing with it has been proven to exist. One can take this to mean that the paranormal simply doesn’t exist, but it’s hard to make one’s mind up when concrete proof for either side of the argument hasn’t been found. Until the existence of the paranormal is either proven true or false, the only thing left for us to do is wait and keep an open mind as research continues.