I think it is very important to keep a list of surveys trying to determine how common are reports of paranormal experiences. Publishing such a list helps to show how common such experiences are, and helps to disprove false claims that only some tiny fraction of the population report such things. My list of such surveys appear as a bullet list in my post here.
This afternoon I added a very interesting addition to that bullet list:
"A project entitled 'Investigation of the phenomenology and impact of perceived spontaneous and direct After-Death Communications (ADCs)' was conducted from February 2018 to January 2020, with results described here and here. About 1000 people were surveyed. 460 of these people reported a 'visual ADC' which often corresponded to an apparition of the dead. We read, 'For 61.6% of our sample, the deceased seemed solid like a living being, for 12.5% the apparition was semitransparent, and 11.3% perceived a foggy silhouette.' We also read, 'For 59.8% the apparitions were already there when they perceived them and for 28.5% they were materializing right before their eyes. After a few seconds or a few minutes, they were fading away gradually (14.4%), dissolving instantly (28.1%), or not there anymore when respondents blinked (18.0%). 79.8% claimed that the apparition conveyed a message, either in words, telepathically, or by expression of the face.' "
Just after adding this passage to my previous post, there was a strange synchronicity. In Season 4 of the very dry and down-to-earth TV series I was watching ("The Lincoln Lawyer" on Netflix) -- a season which thus far is something you might say is something that only a lawyer or a law student would love -- the main character suddenly starts talking to a ghost. It is the ghost of the father-figure character played by Elliot Gould, whose death we had been told about only a few minutes earlier. We soon learn it is a dream sequence.
I thought this was a good moment to take a few photos of my TV, in hopes of getting an orb photo -- maybe something like the photo here in which I got an orange orb above the TV while my TV screen showed a depiction of fairy magic. So I took five photos of the main "Lincoln Lawyer" character talking to the ghost. My hope about the orb photo was not fulfilled. There was nothing unusual in the photos.
But at the very instant I finished checking the photos on my camera, I kind of go, "What on Earth!" I notice that in a very noticeable spot about a meter from where I am sitting, right in front of me, is a yellow rubber band on the floor. I had worked at the same spot for 5+ hours that day, with only me in the room, and had not touched any rubber bands in that room previously that day. My strict policy is to pick up from my floor any and all out-of-place items I see on the floor (things like coins, pens and rubber bands), as soon as I see them. So how, I ask myself, could there be a rubber band right in right of me, one that went unnoticed by me in the previous five hours I was working from that spot, where the rubber band would have been very noticeable?
It seemed rather as if the rubber band had teleported to the spot I saw it at, at the very moment I was taking a photo of the TV ghost. I have seen similar anomalies involving rubber bands more than 27 times, and I report some of them in my series of posts here. An interesting speculation is that an invisible power may leave hints of its presence by moving or teleporting very lightweight objects such as rubber bands or coins, perhaps with synchronicity involved. I know (as I reported here) that only a few minutes after audibly stating that it was my late mother's 100th birthday, I was spooked to see a quarter on top of a bedspread I had just laid out a few minutes before making the statement.
Postscript: The next day there was another spooky event. Standing in front of a sink, I ate a few mini-marshmallows from a bag. A few minutes later I was very surprised to see one of the mini-marshmallows on the other side of the room, about 2.5 meters away, aligned to the wall. I asked myself: how could that have happened? I came up with an explanatory hypothesis: maybe I dropped one of the mini-marshmallows, and it rolled 2.5 meters. I tested the hypothesis by taking a mini-marshmallow, and rolling it on the ground, rather as you might roll a bowling ball. The hypothesis failed, because friction caused the rolling to stop after much less than a meter of rolling. We have in this strange sighting some possible "Other Side" symbolism.
Post-postscript: The next day I had a striking dream that may be relevant to what I report above. I dreamed that I had forgot what street I lived on, and that I remembered that I lived on "Numen street" (which is not the actual street I live on). Very strangely, in the dream I thought something like, "It is important that I remember this word numen, so to help me remember I will recall that it sounds the same as the Newman character on the Seinfeld TV series." When I awoke I did not know what the word "numen" means, it being a word I had never used. After awaking I looked up the definition of the word, which is: "the spirit or divine power presiding over a thing or place."
