University Offers Degree in Parapsychology

By Tony Lawrence
BBC

Students are to investigate the existence of ghosts as part of a degree course looking at people's experience of the paranormal. Coventry University is offering the chance to look into haunted houses, extra-sensory perception and "the survival of bodily death".

Tony Lawrence, director of the two-year parapsychology course, said it would be "controversial yet thought-provoking". The focus will be the "middle ground" between religion and science, he added.

The 15 post-graduate students starting the first course this autumn will look at the paranormal using several scientific methods. For instance, some will investigate haunted houses, looking at statistics on which parts of buildings provide the most sightings.

Extra-sensory perception - where two people seem to communicate without using sound, vision, touch or smell - will also be looked at.

Dr Lawrence said: "We've got to look at what people are experiencing. No one has bothered to look, so people's view of the world has been divided into two components: the secular and humanist, and the religious."


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