Between Electricity and Spirit: Paranormal Investigation and the Creation of Doubt in England

Abstract

In contemporary England, amateur paranormal investigators actively seek empirical evidence of the paranormal. These investigators are self-fashioned experts who aim to balance scientific and spiritual perspectives in hopes of researching the existence of ghosts from an objective perspective. Despite actively seeking out ghosts and amassing firsthand paranormal experiences, investigators remain deeply doubtful about the nature of their evidence and the existence of the paranormal. Here, I explore the production and experience of doubt by examining paranormal investigators' struggles to define and quantify the paranormal. Competing ideas about the substance or nature of ghosts lie at the heart of this struggle. Paranormal investigators agree that collecting and analyzing electromagnetic energy offers the most promising pathway for establishing empirical evidence of the paranormal.However, there is analytic uncertainty regarding the meaning of electromagnetic energy: it might indicate a spiritual or natural presence. Here, I argue that these two competing frames of interpretation engender and sustain states of doubt among investigators; however, paradoxically, these very states of doubt allow them to maintain and sustain embodied encounters with the very paranormal forces they doubt. [doubt, knowledge production, science, spirituality, paranormal, electromagnetic energy, embodied encounters, England] RESUMEN En la Inglaterra contemporánea, investigadores aficionados de lo paranormal activamente buscan evidencia empírica de lo paranormal. Estos investigadores son expertos autoformados quienes tienen el propósito de balancear las perspectivas científica y espiritual en esperanzas de investigar la existencia de espíritus desde una perspectiva objetiva. A pesar de buscar activamente los espíritus y acumular experiencias paranormales de primera mano, los investigadores permanecen profundamente dudosos acerca de la naturaleza de su evidencia y la existencia de lo paranormal. Aquí, exploro la producción y experiencia de duda examinando las luchas de los investigadores de lo paranormal por definir y cuantificar lo paranormal. Ideas conflictivas acerca de la sustancia o naturaleza de los espíritus subyacen en el fondo de esta lucha. Los investigadores paranormales coinciden en que reunir y analizar energía electromagnética ofrece el sendero más prometedor para establecer la evidencia empírica de lo paranormal.Sin embargo, hay una incertidumbre analítica con relación al significado de la energía electromagnética: puede indicar una presencia espiritual o natural. Aquí, argumento que estos dos marcos conflictivos de interpretación generan y sostienen estados de duda entre investigadores; sin embargo, paradójicamente, estos precisos estados de duda les permiten mantener y sostener encuentros con las precisas fuerzas paranormales de las cuales ellos dudan. [duda, producción de conocimiento, ciencia, espiritualidad, paranormal, energía electromagnética, encuentros corpóreos, Inglaterra]

New media and the digitized paranormal: instrumentation, affective atmospheres, and the production of history in Chile

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At the Edge of the Sensible: Cultivating Doubt in Radically Engaged Anthropology and Spirituality

“…While the literature on spiritual and religious communities increasingly fills with descriptions of doubt (e.g., Hanks 2016; Oustinova‐Stjepanovic 2015; Pelkmans 2013), doubt has long held a conspicuously shadowy position in accounts of how the anthropologist comes to understand spiritual phenomena. Instead, doubt is often presented as a cultural artifact from another world: that of science, secular or differently religious societies (e.g., Earle 2007; Turner 1992b)—a disposition of disbelief one must temporarily move beyond by learning the proper cultural sensibilities to craft valid analyses (e.g., Klin‐Oron 2015; Knibbe and Droogers 2011).…”

Magic, an appreciation

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