Feline fine with the paranormal

With Halloween on our doorstep tomorrow, the spooky season will officially draw to a close. This year I discovered a whole new trend thanks to my work colleagues — ghost cats. And it got me thinking about the power of the mind and manifestations of spirit beings.

Have you ever come face-to-face with a ghost?

Parapsychologists, who specialise in paranormal, psychic, or extra-sensory perception have found that about one in five people believes in ghosts and claims to have seen apparitions. The problem with psychic phenomena, however, is that there’s not enough scientific evidence to prove (or disprove) their presence. Despite academic research in parapsychology since the 1930s, critics still vehemently deny its validity.

But anyone who has been through a paranormal experience knows their own truth, and they can find it really hard to know where to get quality care, suitable for their needs. People who report recurring paranormal experiences are often labelled as mentally ill, given diagnoses such as psychosis or schizophrenia, perhaps with auditory or visual hallucinations.

There’s absolutely no denying these mental health conditions exist, nor the impact on a person’s life. But there’s a real need to dig deeper into the realm of the subconscious mind and to understand the role of trauma.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung believed that we’re all connected to each other and our ancestors through common experiences, which create a form of psychic energy — known as the collective conscious and unconscious. But this energetic thread, that he alleges weaves through all of us, isn’t measurable through any quantitative means of analysis.

However, he argued that our collective field of thought was generated through shared experience, and results in common beliefs. This can be seen in global mythologies. For example, feline spirits appear in folklore from China and Japan to Egypt and Norway, as well as in Celtic traditions. Accordingly, the collective mind field is also responsible for the creation of parapsychological phenomena.

It’s important to understand that superstitious beliefs and psychic experiences are more common for people with a history of trauma. Furthermore, there is clear evidence linking childhood trauma with higher instances of supernatural belief and increased paranormal experiences.

But few psychologists and therapists have the tools that are needed to support clients through what they say are psychic attacks and events. And clinical interventions often lead to highly medicated, and chronically unwell individuals, which further perpetuate the cycle and leaves many people feeling like a shell of themselves.

However, trauma-informed frameworks, and therapists who specialise in parapsychology and non-ordinary transpersonal experiences, as well as relevant peer support groups, can be useful avenues for seeking support. There’s a real danger in turning the paranormal into pathology. Doing so dismisses people’s real, or perceived-to-be-real, experiences of other-worldly events.

“Normal is an illusion, for what is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly,” as famously uttered by The Addams Family’s matriarch Morticia (as created by American cartoonist Charles Addams).

Many cultures throughout history have celebrated and revered people who have the ability to “see beyond the veil” — psychics have been revered as priests and prophets, shamans, and oracles. What’s normal or even venerated by one person or culture, may seem completely off-planet to another.

However, with little verified scientific evidence, and few ways to prove that spirits and entities exist (though lived experience speaks volumes), we need to exercise caution. Genius and absurdity swim in the same waters — those of the unconscious and subconscious mind. And the truth is out there, though sometimes it’s really out there.

This article was first published in The West Australian in Renée Gardiner’s weekly column in Agenda, 30 October 2021.