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| | Research Article |
| Rachael IRONSIDE | Death, Ghosts, and Spiritual Tourism: Conceptualizing a Dark Spiritual Experience Spectrum for the Paranormal Market
Paranormal tourism is a lucrative market offering visitors the opportunity to engage with
enchanting experiences and stories in destinations around the world. Specifically, ghost
tourism connects people to the dead (and death) through dark narratives, supernatural
legends, and participatory experiences. Previous scholarship has suggested that ghost
tourism exhibits characteristics of dark tourism (by visiting dark places) and spiritual
tourism (by engaging in spiritual practices); however, this relationship has not been fully
explored. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to consider where the experiential
and motivational characteristics of dark, spiritual, and paranormal tourism converge,
and to consider whether this convergence produces a dark spiritual experience for
consumers. Three dimensions are identified as contributing towards the degree of
dark experience offered by ghost tourism: place, promotion and production, and
participation. To conclude, a Dark Spiritual Experience Spectrum is proposed, illustrating
the characteristics of each dimension and their influence on the degree of dark spiritual
experience offered to consumers. It is argued that these dimensions have the potential
to impact the tourist experience, influence visitor motivations, and, consequently, drive
an evolving paranormal market. | 602-615 |
|
| | Essay |
| Lance STORM | The Dark Spirit of the Trickster Archetype in Parapsychology
In this paper, the phenomenology of the Trickster (its ‘darker’ side) is explored. The
archetypal Trickster is shown to manifest as psychosociological aberrations and bizarre
physical effects often associated with unique individuals during certain emotionally
charged states. Though the Trickster and its many variants have mythological roots, the
modern-day equivalent (free, for example, from anthropomorphization) can be seen as
an activated psychological proneness to err in thinking when a liminal phase is entered
into—that borderland between doubt and certainty. Mainstream academia considers
the field of parapsychology to be controversial—it is marginalized because the phenomena it studies (the paranormal) is mostly illusive, usually weak even when proved to be
statistically anomalous, and the psi process itself has not been theoretically explained.
This state of affairs propagates uncertainty which can trigger ‘tricksterish’ (spurious)
interpretations of parapsychological data and findings: Long-term experimenter psi and
chronological decline effects are cases in point. Due caution and bias-free analysis of
the data and findings may help ameliorate, perhaps even dissolve, the problem of the
Trickster | |
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| | SPECIAL SUBSECTION |
| Nancy SMOOT TRAMONT | From ‘Baby Doctor’ to ‘Witch Doctor’: A Retrospective of Charles Tramont’s Work with
Spirit Releasement Therapy | |
| | Abstract: The work of Charles Tramont, M.D. showed that Comprehensive Hypnoregression
Therapy can be a powerful healing tool when a hypnotized patient’s subconscious
reveals to the conscious mind the cause of suffering. Often perceived to be from pastlife events or attached discarnate entities of which the subject was previously unaware,
Tramont’s patients reported significant improvement after experiencing techniques
related to apparent past-life regression and ‘entity removal.’ Eight such cases are
summarized here, and these might suggest that various types of ‘dark forces’ do indeed
exist and can disrupt people’s overall development and well-being |
