So you want an education in Paraosycology? So is there such a higher school of learning for would be ghost hunters? In reality, no accredited American college or university offers a formal parapsychology degree at this time. There is of course lots of funding for such a course, but because many selective colleges want to distance themselves from paranormal claims made by those within the New Age movement and paranormal field community none exist in America.

The University of Glasgow is one of the world's top universities. The University of Glasgow's Observatory has been looking to the heavens for 250 years. And now they are opening the door to the resarch of ghost and Paranormal studies.

HIGH spirits on campus are more usually associated with student union bars than lecture halls, but one of Scotland's oldest seats of learning is offering classes studying spooks, poltergeists and demonic possession. Glasgow University will start running a course in psychical research next month, which aims to show that supernatural phenomena do occur. --news.scotsman.com

Koestler Parapsychology Unit or KPU is part of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. The noted writer Arthur Koestler and his wife Cynthia provided in their wills for the establishment of an endowed Chair of Parapsychology at a British University. The declared intention was to further objective scientific research into "...the capacity attributed to some individuals to interact with their environment by means other than the recognised sensory and motor channels". Following the Koestlers' deaths in 1983, their trustees advertised the post and in 1984 awarded the Chair to the University of Edinburgh. The successful candidate invited to serve as the first occupant of the Chair was Robert Morris, who held the post from December 1985 until his untimely death in August 2004. However, parapsychology has been part of the University of Edinburgh for longer than this. For over fifteen years prior to the appointment of Professor Morris, the late Dr John Beloff researched and taught parapsychology, with many of his graduate students still active in the field today. The Koestler Unit conducts well-controlled scientific studies into potential psi abilities.

Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research

Presents archival material concerning the study of consciousness-related physical phenomena. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program, which flourished for nearly three decades under the aegis of Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, has completed its experimental agenda of studying the interaction of human consciousness with sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes, and developing complementary theoretical models to enable better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality. It has now incorporated its present and future operations into the broader venue of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL), a 501(c)(3) organization chartered in the State of New Jersey. In this new locus and era, PEAR plans to expand its archiving, outreach, education, and entrepreneurial activities into broader technical and cultural context, maintaining its heritage of commitment to intellectual rigor and integrity, pragmatic and beneficial relevance of its techniques and insights, and sophistication of its spiritual implications. As described more fully on the ICRL website, PEAR also will continue to provide the scholarly pedestal from which all other ICRL activities will radiate.

Sometime next spring, the Prince-ton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory (PEAR), a little-known but sometimes-controversial participant in the University’s research community, will clear its shelves and close its door, bringing an end to 27 years of exploring mind-matter interactions in a scientific context.

Located on the ground floor of the E-Quad’s C-wing, the lab seems out of place, with a well-worn couch, wood-paneled walls, and a collection of aging game-like devices on which many of the lab’s trials were performed. When Robert Jahn ’51 *55, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering emeritus, first proposed the lab in the late 1970s, its mission also seemed out of place, or at least out of the mainstream.

PEAR will not enjoy the same fate. International Consciousness Research Laboratories, a not-for-profit group associated with PEAR, supported research in recent years, but with no viable long-term successor and most of the lab’s funding evaporating, Jahn has decided to close the lab, with no regrets. “Without a doubt it has been the most personally stimulating and rewarding intellectual activity I’ve ever been involved in,” he said. “I feel very privileged for having been allowed to take a scholarly walk into this extraordinarily strange garden.”

Remote Perception

This phenomenon has seen considerable attention in recent days under the title of "Remote Viewing", but since it appears to involve all sensory modalities rather than vision alone, PEAR has always used "Remote Perception" as its label. In a typical PEAR experiment, one participant (the "agent") goes to a specified site and describes it on a written transcript, preferably including photographs and/or sketches. Another participant, the "percipient", attempts to perceive the agent's surroundings, and provides another transcript, preferably including a sketch.

Both transcripts are then coded onto a "descriptor" checksheet which attempts to summarize important features of the scene. The checksheets are then scored against each other for their degree of similarity. Because there will be some degree of correspondence between any pair of descriptions, the statistical analysis of the remote perception experiment proceeds by scoring all agent checksheets against all percipient checksheets, regardless of whether they belong to the same trial. The matched scores corresponding to actual trials are then compared to the background of mismatched scores from different trials, which measures the degree of chance correspondence from random scenes, participant prejudices and styles, "Barnum" descriptions (that is, descriptions that apply to almost any scene), and, it is hoped, all other relevant confounding factors. The internal and external programs of the PEAR laboratory have been supported by a number of persons and organizations, among them: Richard Adams, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene, the Lifebridge Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Ohrstrom Foundation, Mr. Laurance S. Rockefeller, and the late Mr. Donald Webster, along with various other philanthropic agencies and individuals.

The American Society for Psychical Research (www.aspr.com or call 212-799-5050) has occasionally published new editions of its Courses and Other Study Opportunities in Parapsychology, which lists a wide variety of courses that have been offered in the past (and are hopefully still being offered) for credit in and out of the United States.

Lloyd Auerbach, MS
Director, The Office of Paranormal Investigations

The American Society for Psychical Research personally offer monthly non-credit seminars in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition, the American Institute of Parapsychology in Florida (www.parapsychologyinstitute.org ) has begun offering a certificate program.

In terms of actual study for a degree in parapsychology, JFK University in Pleasant Hill, CA (www.jfku.edu), which does offer coursework relating to dreams, used to offer a graduate degree in the field (1978-1986). Rosebridge Graduate School of Integrative Psychology, now merged into another school, also used to offer advanced degrees in parapsychology (both schools in Northern California). Unfortunately, there are no such accredited degrees being offered as of right now.

In actuality, nearly all of the parapsychologists in the world do not have a degree in parapsychology and may have backgrounds in almost any science you can think of (though a large number have degrees in psychology and physics). A number of schools offer degrees in psychology, anthropology, or other fields allowing you to do your work with a parapsychological concentration, often under the guidance of a parapsychologist affiliated/on the faculty of the university. Such schools include the University of Virginia, West Georgia College, Antioch University, Saybrook Institute, California Institute of Integral Studies, and the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire offers some focus on parapsychology within their undergraduate psychology programs, and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland has a great focus on parapsychology for grad students.

In the United States, Saybrook Institute (www.saybrook.edu) and the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology (www.itp.edu), both in California, are your best bets for graduate school (and offer distance learning options), and Franklin Pierce College (www.fpc.edu) for undergrad.

If you want to get into the field of parapsychology, then go to a good, strong undergraduate university, whether there is a course on parapsychology or not. Get a background in psychology, anthropology, physics or some other social or physical science, but also make sure you take at least introductory level courses in other fields (especially psychology, physics and cultural anthropology) so you are familiar with concepts that might have a direct bearing on parapsychological research and investigation. Learn the ways of science (maybe a philosophy or history of science course), since we have noticed that people get disappointed when entering a course in parapsychology that is as scientifically oriented as they should be (and not just looking at auras or learning to develop one's own psi). A course or two in statistics and psychological research methods couldn't hurt, either.

Then, when looking for a graduate school, you might attempt to work up a master's program that will allow you to do research or investigation in parapsychological topics. If you have no one at your university to guide you (no parapsychologist, or faculty member familiar with the current literature), contact one of the research organizations for suggestions. Also, you never know when things might change for the better, and a new accredited degree program gets underway. The aforementioned organizations will have knowledge of such an event.

As far as the job market in the field goes, realize that such positions are quite limited. There are few research laboratories around, and fewer places that offer funding for field investigations (meaning, next to none). So, you may have to use that background of your in whatever field you've gotten it in to get a post in a university which might be open to your offering courses in parapsychology, and to doing research in this area. Or, you might try writing as a source of income, or lecturing, or running workshops and seminars. I personally do a bit of all of that, with a focus on lecturing to specific audiences such as the college market.

In any event, speak with people at the various organizations, get to know parapsychologists and their work, and be creative.

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Often in Forums and on web site emails come in asking asked about what it takes to research the paranormal or where to go to school to learn about it or get a Degree. If you really want to pursue things that go bump in the night more then check ou these sties below...

PARAPSYCHOLOGY: Departments, Laboratories and Societies

American Society for Psychical Research
http://www.aspr.com/index.html

Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit
http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/apru/

Associazione Italiana Scientifica di Metapsichica
http://www.metapsichica.it/

Australian Institute of Parapsychological Research, Inc.
http://www.aiprinc.org/

Division of Personality Studies
http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/home.cfm

Exceptional Human Experience Network
http://www.ehe.org

Fondazione Biblioteca Bozzano-De Boni
http://www2.comune.bologna.it/bologna/fbibbdb/evhmfb.htm

Institut fur Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (Istitute for Borderland Psychology and Psychohygiene)
http://www.igpp.de/english/welcome.htm

Institut Métapsychique International (International Metapsychic Institute)
http://www.metapsychique.org/

Instituto de Psicología Paranormal (Institute of Paranormal Psychology)
http://www.alipsi.com.ar/

International Association for Near-Death Studies
http://www.iands.org/

International Society of Life Information Science
http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/islis/journal.htm

International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine
http://www.issseem.org/

Inter Psi: Grupo de Estudo de Semiótica, Interconectividade e Consciência (Inter Psi: A Study Group of Semiotics, Interconnectivity and Consciousness)
http://www.semioticon.com/semiotix/semiotix7/index.html

Österreichische Gesellschaft für Parapsychologie und Grenzbereiche der Wissenschaften
(Austrian Society for Parapsychology and Border Areas of Science)
http://parapsychologie.ac.at/

Parapsychological Association
http://www.parapsych.org/

Rhine Research Center
http://www.rhine.org/

Society for Psychical Research
http://www.spr.ac.uk/

Society for Scientific Exploration
http://www.scientificexploration.org/

Research Laboratories and Units

Conscious Universe Archival Website for Dean Radin
http://www.deanradin.com/

International Consciousness Research Laboratories
http://www.icrl.org/

Koestler Parapsychology Unit, University of Edinburgh
http://moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/

Laboratorie de Parapsychologie de Toulouse
http://geepp.or3p.free.fr/index1024.htm

Laboratories of Fundamental Research
http://www.lfr.org/

Perrott-Warrick Research Unit, University of Hertfordshire
http://www.psy.herts.ac.uk/app-cog-behav-sci-group.html

Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/

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