The brain.
The experience.

Consciousness + Perception / Evidence and hypotheses

Paranormal reports, psychological distress and RSPK

AI assistant editorial draft / approved topic, prepared 21 October 2026. Historical reports, measured psychological effects and speculative explanations are treated separately.

Begin with the report

Poltergeist reports describe events such as unexplained knocking, displaced objects or disturbances attributed to an unseen agency. RSPK means recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis: a hypothesis used in parapsychology to interpret some reported disturbances as effects associated with a living person. Using that name does not establish the proposed mechanism.

A recent case-database study by Bryan J. Williams and Gerald F. Solfvin revisited William G. Roll’s earlier survey of 116 reports spanning 1612–1974 and extended its database to 212 cases through 2021. Its accessible abstract describes similarities across surveys and calls for systematic study. These are selected reported cases, not a random sample or a controlled demonstration of mind moving matter. Original study record and abstract, Journal of Parapsychology 88(1). The full paper was not accessible in this review; detailed case statistics have therefore not been imported.

Distress, adolescence and the problem of selection

The approved Information Library question asks whether some disturbances cluster around people under intense emotional strain, including adolescents facing social pressure. That is a question about reports, not an established finding about distressed people. The materials checked here do not establish the frequency of such a link or whether it differs from comparison households. A collection selected because it seems unusual cannot by itself answer either question.

Even an association would leave several possibilities: stress might precede the report; a frightening disturbance might create stress; witnesses might interpret events differently under pressure; or both might share another cause. These are methodological alternatives, not a diagnosis of a witness. A teenager’s distress is not evidence that they caused an event, and disbelief is not evidence of deliberate deception.

What psychological evidence can show

People can influence each other’s emotional experience through ordinary social information. In two controlled experiments, Deng and Hu examined responses to angry and happy expressions and found differing roles for mimicry and appraisal. That supports studying how other people’s expressions affect experience. It does not establish direct consciousness-to-object action, or an ability to know that somebody cried in an empty room without ordinary cues. Deng and Hu — original emotional-contagion experiments.

The body’s stress response can change heart rate, breathing and muscle tension. Those are physiological responses within an organism; they do not demonstrate a force that breaks glass or moves furniture. NIMH — explanation of stress responses. Describing a room as tense can communicate a real social experience without specifying a new physical mechanism.

Testing environmental explanations

In the Haunt project, 79 participants entered a room under different infrasound and electromagnetic-field conditions. Many reported unusual sensations, but their reports did not track the experimental conditions. The authors favoured suggestion as the simplest explanation for their results. This does not prove that every reported haunting has the same explanation, and it does not establish that infrasound universally creates hauntings. French and colleagues — original Cortex research, 2009.

For a particular disturbance, an investigation would need to distinguish contemporaneous observations from later recollections, check physical and electrical causes, account for vibration and access to objects, compare witnesses independently and consider suggestion, coincidence, recording limitations and deliberate activity. These are proposed investigative controls, not findings that any specific witness fabricated a report. Where electrical or structural faults are suspected, practical assessment matters more than the label attached to the event.

Consciousness–matter claims need their own evidence

A 2018 experiment involving 12,571 participants found evidence favouring no average micro-psychokinesis effect in its quantum-randomness task. That result concerns its defined task; it is not a direct test of every historical poltergeist report. It does show why laboratory outcomes and field stories cannot simply be treated as interchangeable support. Maier and colleagues — original experiment.

Keep the boundaries visible

A witness report establishes what someone says happened. A psychological experiment tests a particular process under specified conditions. A paranormal interpretation proposes an explanation. Speculation asks what might be possible. None automatically supplies the evidence required by the next. The sources reviewed here do not establish that psychokinesis has been scientifically demonstrated. Respectful investigation can preserve a person’s experience while leaving the proposed cause unproven.

The original Information Library 2 submission and historical assistant response are preserved separately in the private recovery records. This article develops the approved topic; it does not rewrite those original words.