The Dr. John Hall story: a case study in putative “Haunted People Syndrome”

ABSTRACT

Research suggests a “Haunted People Syndrome (HP-S)” defined by recurrent and systematic perceptions of anomalous subjective and objective anomalies. Such signs or symptoms are traditionally attributed to “spirits and the supernatural,” but these themes are hypothesised to morph to “surveillance and stalking” in reports of “group-(or gang) stalking,” We tested this premise with a quali-quantitative exercise that mapped group-stalking experiences from a published first-hand account to a Rasch measure of haunt-type anomalies. This comparison found significant agreement in the specific “signs or symptoms” of both phenomena. Meta-patterns likewise showed clear conceptual similarities between the phenomenology of haunts and group-stalking. Findings are consistent with the idea that both anomalous episodes involve the same, or similar, attentional or perceptual processes and thereby support the viability of the HP-S construct.

KEYWORDS:

• Content analysis
• delusions
• encounter experiences
• ghosts
• group-stalking
• syndrome

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Ciaran O'Keeffe http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9655-3261

James Houran http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1725-582X

Neil Dagnall http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0657-7604

Kenneth Drinkwater http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4015-0578

Lorraine Sheridan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8705-0531

Notes

1 We use “HP-S” vs “HPS,” because the latter acronym is already prevalent in the clinical literature to reference many different disorders or medical topics

2 Early investigators surmised that “hysteria” was sometimes involved in haunt-related cases (see e.g., Grasset, 1903-1904), so Lange and Houran’s basic hypothesis is not wholly new or original.

3 “Carol Carmel, Armed Recovery Agent,” Updated Aug 22, 2017. Retrieved October 31, 2018 from. https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-know-if-youre-being-gang-stalked. Note: emphasis added to denote symptoms of stalking that seemingly map against those for haunt-poltergeist accounts. This account has a raw tally of nine types of anomalous “ghostly” events that equates to a Rasch score of 48.6 (SE = 2.8) on the SSE measure, which has a M = 50.