Something I just learned today, apparently
Penn is doing real ghost research. Yes, an Ivy league school doing paranormal work, and while it does involve sociology that's not all it is:
Quote:
Bridging subjects from religious studies to nursing to East Asian studies and more, the Penn Ghost Project consists of a group of interdisciplinary professors and academics, who all are interested in studying the social phenomena surrounding ghosts. The initiative started three years ago and has recently expanded its project list.
“Penn was really the only center that ever did anything like this,” Religious Studies professor Justin McDaniel said.
Penn is unique in having a history of paranormal academia.
The Penn Ghost Project even draws an uncanny parallel to the Seybert commission, a 19th century study on whether ghosts are real or not. The study was prompted by a monetary gift with the caveat that “the University should appoint a Commission to investigate ‘all systems of Morals, Religion or Philosophy which assume to represent the Truth, and particularly of Modern Spiritualism” — in simpler terms, whether ghosts exist.
And while the Seybert commission concluded that ghosts are not a real phenomenon, that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to study about them.
“We’re taking the study of ghosts both sociologically, psychologically and aesthetically, seriously,” McDaniel said. The group focuses on studying and documenting the idea of ghosts, the ways in which the concept of the lingering deceased has been and continues to be alive and well throughout the world.
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Ironically, ghosts are probably one of the things I'm least interested in, along with NDE's, I would guess because I'm an agnostic boardering on atheist who's ambivalent about the concept of an afterlife, but I'm glad to see it nonetheless.