Editorial: Psi and Fiction

Who wants to believe? Parapsychologists typically don’t claim any attraction for the fictional domain, to which they are opposing their “scientific facts.” Yet, we wonder if, in this way, parapsychology loses much of its fun.

It’s nice to remember that Chuck Honorton, one of the most prodigious experimental parapsychologists of the second half of the twentieth century, was an absolute Trekkie – i.e., a Star Trek fan, able to provide direct quotes from many episodes (McCarthy, 1993). Is science fiction (SF) just the cute indulgence of some parapsychologists?

Is science fiction (SF) just the cute indulgence of some parapsychologists?

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I (R.E.) must confess a personal experience. As a young researcher, I was trapped by a journalist who initially presented himself as a person struggling with his exceptional experiences. He caused me much trouble while publishing my claim in his pseudo-interview that I was unable to read fiction anymore because “psi goes so much further than SF.” This is tricky as most SF ideas are clearly out of the range of psi. But, it was partly true that “easy” SF with low scientific credibility is no longer able to catch my attention and that I became angry when paranormal topics are turned into horrific, comical, or illogical scenarios. It’s like no scenarist has ever had or heard about a genuinely exceptional experience, with all the difficulties to interpret it, all the elusiveness around it. For instance, “ghosts” are one of the worst characters in fictional stories: never close to the reported phenomenology and functions in actual accounts. In my opinion, Paranormal Activity (2007) is one of the best attempts to figure out what a haunting experience looks like, unless (SPOILER ALERT) they put a monster figure in the end.

This lack of authenticity created a challenge and mandate for me: I had to write my own psi fiction.

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This lack of authenticity created a challenge and mandate for me: I had to write my own psi fiction. It took me only a week to write a novel about a family-hunting case, merging several true testimonies with my own personal life. In my story, the ghost is not a dangerous revenger with infinite powers but rather a psychophysical process that echoes intimate feelings and thoughts. Of course, it will take me years to find a publisher, but it was a very fun exercise. In fact, I shaped that fiction as a true “X-file” that I, as an academic Assistant Professor of Psychology, Renaud Évrard, received from a fellow colleague, Gaétan Moser. I put fake documents, diary extracts, interviews, and research reports to show the situation through various perspectives, and the “academic me” provided a cautious foreword. Then, I sent it to several colleagues: half of them fell into my trap and didn’t perceive its fictional source. Indeed, it was too close to what they observed themselves in their research or clinical settings.

Fictional truths may be what psi is all about. This is what the philosopher Bertrand Méheust taught us about UFO observations, which were anticipated in the fictional literature, comics, and even in various kinds of folklore.

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Fictional truths may be what psi is all about. This is what the philosopher Bertrand Méheust (2007) taught us about UFO observations, which were anticipated in the fictional literature, comics, and even in various kinds of folklore (Méheust, 2019); this was even before Arnold’s 1954 “flying saucer” observation. The same was true about alien abductions (Meurger, 1995). This coincidence between SF and FS (flying saucer) was and still is a substantial intellectual challenge (Kripal, 2010).

Before writing a fictional novel about hauntings, I wrote a novel about ectoplasm, following the suggestions of some of the readers of my heavily academic historical book on French parapsychology (Evrard, 2016). This was so easy: the characters (Charles Richet, Pierre and Marie Curie, the medium Marthe Béraud, etc.) were already romantic as can be; “the scientific hunting of ectoplasm all around the world” is a perfect 9-words-Hollywood-pitch. To add to the realism, I simply copied extracts from the minutes, correspondence, and memoirs of the protagonists. I felt more like a director than a writer. (Again, this is still an unpublished novel, but I will be happy to share it as it has already been translated into English thanks to Bevis Beauvais.) For a researcher who is always concerned with the quality of scientific debate, the domain of fiction is clearly a breath of fresh air. It is no surprise that many psychists, like Charles Richet himself, have published fiction on the same themes as his nonfiction publications (Carroy, 2015). What gave me the courage to publish my own was to see that even a non-fiction author I admire so much, Bertrand Méheust (2018), had taken the plunge, writing about ecological and anomalistic anticipation but tinged with biting humor.

However, like the authors who answered our call and whom you are about to read in this issue (and in another, as we have received so many interesting articles), we can also link psi and fiction around serious, even essential, reflections. The juxtaposition of the two fields is more important than we think, as Damien Broderick’s (2018) outstanding work shows. Fiction shapes the representations of everyone, including those who have exceptional experiences. In many cases, these individuals will have no frame other than these representations by which to assess their situation. It is also the case that fiction incorporating the paranormal, through the powers of mutants, magicians, extraterrestrials, etc., saturates the Western cultural space, generating billions in annual sales, a far cry from the funding devoted to scientific research in parapsychology (Hansen, 2001). Very few authors, like Jeffrey Kripal (2011), are able to grasp the scope of the issue. It would reveal that our secularized Western culture has actually placed the paranormal at its heart as a form of the sacred in transit. Fact or fiction?

References

Broderick, D. (2018). Psiscience fiction. The paranormal in science fiction literature. McFarland.

Carroy, J. (2015). Charles Richet au seuil du mystère. In J. van Wijland (Ed.), Charles Richet (1850-1935). L’exercice de la curiosité (pp. 65-79). Presses universitaires de Rennes.

Evrard, R. (2016). La légende de l’esprit. Enquête sur 150 ans de parapsychologie. Trajectoire.

Evrard, R. (unpublished). Le Savant et l’Ectoplasme.

Hansen, G. (2001). The trickster and the paranormal. Xlibris.

Kripal, J. (2010). Authors of the impossible. The paranormal and the sacred. Chicago University Press.

Kripal, J. (2011). Mutants and Mystics. Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal. Chicago University Press.

McCarthy, D. (1993). To boldly go: An appreciation of Charles Honorton. The Journal of Parapsychology, 57(1), 7-23.

Méheust, B. (2007). Science-fiction et soucoupes volantes: Une réalité mythico-physique (2^nd Ed). Terre de Brume.

Méheust, B. (2018). La conversion de Guillaume Portail: Comment l’homme le plus riche du monde s’ en est pris au capitalisme [récit]. Libre et Solidaire.

Méheust, B. (2019). La postérité du sabbat ? Retour sur la question des enlèvements soucoupiques. L’œil du Sphinx.

Meurger, M. (1995). Alien abduction: L’enlèvement extraterrestre de la fiction à la croyance. Encrage.

Moser, G. (unpublished). Hantise et conspiration. Le cas de la famille Moser.