Human reports of the strange, anomalous and paranormal are extremely varied. In my post "120+ Types of Paranormal or Anomalous Experiences" I list a great variety of such experiences. Some of this variety is shown in my visual below:
When trying to seriously study such phenomena, a very valuable type of resource is a publicly accessible online database, one that allows you to make particular queries and get search results. An example of such a database is the MUFON database. It is an extensive online database of UFO sightings, which is only one of the many types of paranormal phenomena reported. Unfortunately, the MUFON database fails as an example of what we would like to see in a good online database tracking the paranormal. The main reason it fails is that access to the database is currently restricted to members, and becoming a member requires a monthly payment.
A better example of a publicly accessible online database tracking the anomalous is the free site of the National UFO Reporting Center at https://nuforc.org/. On its page here, you see links that allow you to access UFO reports of particular types:
If I click on one of the "Shape of UFO" link, I go to the page below, which gives me a series of links, and also totals telling me how many observation reports of each type are in the database:
We see above that reports of circular UFOs are far more common than reports of disk-shaped UFOs.
By clicking on one of these links, I can browse through all of the observation reports of a particular type. For example, if I click on the Circle link, I go to the page below, which allows me to browse through 14,000+ reports of circle-shaped UFOs.
The page uses a pagination system allowing you to navigate to different subpages by using Next and Previous buttons. So we can see below that you can navigate to any of 147 subpages showing reports of circle-shaped UFOs.
Clicking on any of these rows takes you to a report page that gives data on that particular report. Below is an example:
We have at this site a fairly good example of how to do a good online database allowing people to study reports of some particular type of observational anomaly. The site includes an interface allowing people to submit new reports of UFOs. Clicking on the File a UFO Report button at the top of the site takes you to a nice page that first warns you about various types of things that are misidentified as UFOs, and then has at the bottom a button you can press to file a UFO report:
I can imagine "bells and whistles" that would make this interface more useful. It would be nice if the user interface allowed you to make more specific searches, such as a search of all the circle-shaped UFOs seen in California between one date and some other date. But this site at least shows us what the first stage of a good online database of observations of the paranormal or anomalous would look like. The main limitation of the database is that it only handles reports of UFOs, and such reports are only a small fraction of the reports of the anomalous and inexplicable that humans make.
There are other online databases that collect particular reports of the paranormal. Let us look at some of these, all free.
The www.iands.org site has a collection of reports of about 900 near-death experiences. The accounts consist of first-hand reports anonymously submitted to the site. Lacking search capabilities allowing you to refine your search, the site is not a very good example of how to create a database of reports of anomalous human experiences. Any site collecting such reports should encourage witnesses to state their own name or at least provide an email address allowing people to send follow-up inquires to them. Reports by named witnesses are more reliable than anonymous reports.
The www.nderf.org has a collection of 4000+ reports of near-death experiences. The accounts consist of thousands of first-hand reports semi-anonymously submitted to the site, and the witnesses are identified by names such as Wendy G. Any site collecting such reports should encourage witnesses to state their own name or at least provide an email address allowing people to send follow-up inquires to them. Reports by named witnesses are more reliable than anonymous reports. The site is a better example of how to create a searchable database of reports of anomalous human experiences than the site www.iands.org. Each person submitting a report has been asked a series of questions. There is a search page allowing you to select only those giving particular types of responses to such questions.
For example, I can use the interface to search only for reports in which witnesses claimed all of these things:
An out-of-body experience.
Seeing a bright, unearthly light.
Seeing their past.
I get a total of 354 reports with all three of these elements, as we below:
So now we can do some analytics. Knowing that a search without any search criteria gives 4080 accounts, we can estimate that maybe 9% of near-death experiences have all three of the elements listed above. Similarly, I can search for only accounts including an out-of-body experience. This produces 2380 results, suggesting that out-of-body experiences may occur in most near-death experiences. Similarly, I can search for only accounts in which a witness supposedly saw past lives. Such a search produces only 175 results, suggesting such reports are relatively rare when someone has a near-death experience.
Another type of resource for searching for accounts of the paranormal are sites allowing full-text searches of old newspapers. Newspaper search web sites can be used to make full text searches such as a search for the phrase "mysterious orb" or the phrase "prophetic dream" or the phrase "psychic marvel" or the phrase "saw an apparition." Some of these "search old newspaper" sites charge a fee for use, but the sites below offer powerful searches of old newspapers, without costing you anything:
It requires some practice to be able to use these sites effectively. You can find all kinds of fascinating newspaper stories using these sites. But you will have to get a little practice at being able to recognize the best stories from looking at either thumbnails of such stories or nutshell quotations of the search phrase you used.
A major online resource allowing you to search for accounts of the paranormal is the site
www.iapsop.com, which preserves innumerable periodicals that specialized in collecting reports of the paranormal. Sadly, the site lacks any full-text search capability. Another major online resource is the Psi Encyclopedia you can access
here.
Another major online resource allowing you to search for accounts of the paranormal is the site
www.archive.org. You can search for books on particular subjects. The results will fall into two categories:
(1) Books that anyone can immediately read, even if they are not a registered user at the site.
(2) Books that you can read online only by "borrowing" as a registered user.
It is well worth becoming a registered user to take advantage of the second category, although there are still very many worthwhile books that can be read even if you are not a registered user. My post below has links to many of those books:
No comments:
Post a Comment