Abstract

The work reported here is an attempt to replicate the positive significant relationships reported in previous research between different types of psychic experiences (waking and dream ESP, apparitions, out-of-body experiences, auras and PK), and between psychic experiences and dream recall and lucid dream frequency. The study uses mainly Ibero American participants (most of them Spanish), a population hitherto neglected in this type of studies.

Four-hundred and ninety-two readers of the Spanish magazine Más Allá de la Ciencia, a popular publication devoted to paranormal topics, participated in this study. Sixty-eight percent were female (N = 492). Out of 482 who indicated their nationality, 94% were Spanish. The rest were Mexican (3%), Argentinean (1%), British (0.4%), French (0.4%), and one each of a variety of nationalities (1 %). Unfortunately the age question was omitted in the questionnaire.

The questionnaire used in this study consisted of questions about demographic variables (9), psi (6), mystical (1), and dream experiences (2). In addition, seven questions about details of out-of-body experiences were included. Besides the omission of the question on age, the magazine altered the dream ESP question so that only dreams of future events were mentioned.

The magazine published the questionnaire across two facing pages. Readers were asked to answer even if they had not had any experiences. Respondents returned the questionnaires to the editorial offices and forwarded them to the first author. We corrected for multiple analyses (45 correlations) by using a Bonferroni correction to set a corrected. 001 alpha level.

Dream recall and lucid dreaming frequency were significantly correlated with all psychic experiences, except for apparitions and OBEs (dream recall) and waking ESP and auras (lucid dreams). The pattern of intercorrelations between psychic experiences supported our predictions. Overall, out of 45 correlations ranging from . 039 to . 703, 34 (75%) of the positive correlations were significant.

Our findings support those of previous studies and extends them to nationalities who have not been studied before from this point of view. The picture that emerged from these correlations is consistent with previous research relating psi experiences to fantasy proneness, absorption, dissociation, hypnotic susceptibility, transliminality as well as other experiences and psychological constructs. It seems that the richer our psychological life, in terms of variety of experiences, the richer our parapsychological experiences. Our work is made difficult because we still do not understand the psychology and psychophysiology of these experiences and thus are hampered in our ability to understand the nature of these statistical relationships. As we progress in out understanding of dreams, dissociation and other experiences and constructs, work such as that reported here will hopefully acquire a new meaning.