CONFRONTING THE ELUSIVE FORCE: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF A 20^th CENTURY POLTERGEIST.

Haunted people syndrome (HP-S) describes recurrent 'ghostly episodes' as an interactionist phenomenon involving people with heightened somatic--sensory sensitivities that are stirred by dis-ease states, contextualized with paranormal belief, and reinforced via perceptual contagion and threat-agency detection. We tested the applicability of this systems theory approach using a pre-registered content analysis of a retrospective account concerning intense anomalies surrounding an adolescent female (and her family) living in Poland. Two blinded coders independently used the Survey of Strange Events (SSE) (Houran et al., 2019b) to map the anomalous phenomena in the case, as well as a series of published measures to assess contextual variables that the HP-S model links to haunt-type phenomena. We also explored four attendants to encounter experiences, i.e., 'deep' (autonomous) imaginary companions, stigmata-like marks, environmental influences, and enchantment effects with percipients. Good intercoder agreement across the measures profiled this episode as having (a) an aboveaverage 'haunt intensity' and a content structure that paralleled both performative and spontaneous accounts, (b) a 71% match to the seven aspects of the HP-S recognition patterns, (c) a setting with distinct sentimentality for the afflicted family, and (d) apparent after-effects of situational-enchantment. A statistically derived decision-tree process with the SSE indicated that this case was inconsistent with the characteristics of a purely deceptive account. Not validated were the roles of paranormal belief, sensemaking attributions, most environmental factors, deep imaginary friends, or stigmata phenomena. The results nonetheless align in important ways with prior findings that suggest enactive cognitions help to shape the phenomenology of these episodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]