Ghosts and UFOs

 

A free-standing sequel to the previous blog post...

Is there any evidence that women have paranormal experiences more often (or at least report them more often) than men?

Yes, there is consistent evidence across surveys, case studies, and psychological research that:

Women are more likely than men to report paranormal experiences—including ghosts, telepathy, premonitions, near-death experiences, and contact with spirits or other supernatural entities.

This doesn’t necessarily mean women have more paranormal experiences in some objective sense, but they are:

• More likely to report them

• More likely to believe in them

• More likely to be receptive to such experiences emotionally and cognitively

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📊 Survey and Study Data

✔️ Gallup and Pew Surveys (U.S.)

• Women consistently report higher belief in:

  • Ghosts and spirits

  • Astrology

  • Psychic phenomena

  • Communication with the dead

For example:

• In a 2005 Gallup poll, 41% of women said they believe in ghosts vs. 32% of men

• Belief in psychic powers: women 50% vs. men 35%

• Belief in communication with the dead: women 38% vs. men 26%

✔️ Parapsychological Studies

• Women are more likely to report:

  • ESP (extrasensory perception)

  • Apparitional experiences

  • Sleep-related anomalous events (e.g., hypnagogia)

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🧠 Psychological Explanations

1. Fantasy Proneness and Absorption

• Women, on average, score higher on:

  • Absorption (vivid engagement with internal experiences)

  • Fantasy-proneness

  • Emotional openness

• These traits correlate strongly with reports of paranormal experiences.

2. Greater Emotional Expressiveness

• Women may be more willing to talk about strange or emotionally charged events.

• Paranormal experiences are often subjective, subtle, or ambiguous—interpretation plays a big role.

3. Cultural Conditioning

• Women are more often socialized to:

  • Value intuition, feelings, and relationships (which are often themes in paranormal reports)

  • Engage in narrative, emotional, and symbolic thinking

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🕯️ Types of Paranormal Experiences More Often Reported by Women

Experience	More Commonly Reported By
Seeing or sensing ghosts/spirits	Women
Premonitions or intuitive dreams	Women
Psychic experiences	Women
Contact with deceased loved ones	Women
UFO sightings	Men (especially when linked to technology or conspiracy)
Near-death experiences (subjective)	Slightly more by women
Poltergeist or haunting cases	Often involve adolescent girls as “focus”

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🧬 Could Hormones Play a Role?

Some researchers suggest:

• Fluctuations in estrogen and other hormones may affect perception, memory, and emotional processing, potentially making certain kinds of experiences more vivid or unsettling.

• Sleep paralysis, often interpreted as supernatural, is more common among women.

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🔍 Summary

• Yes, women report more paranormal experiences than men.

• This is supported by surveys, lab studies, and clinical data.

• Reasons are likely psychological, cultural, and cognitive—not biological in any simple way.

• Some experiences (e.g., UFOs, conspiracy-style beliefs) skew male, showing that different types of paranormal belief appeal differently by gender.

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Would you like a deeper dive into fantasy proneness and gender, or a comparison to religious mystical experiences?

I´ve read somewhere that belief in Bigfoot is more common among women, despite most "Bigfoot hunters" or "Bigfoot researchers" being men.

Yes, you're touching on an intriguing and subtle distinction:

Belief in Bigfoot (as a general idea) appears to be relatively gender-balanced or slightly more common among women,
while active involvement in Bigfoot investigation, research, or expedition culture is overwhelmingly male.

Let’s break this down:

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🧠 Belief in Bigfoot: Slight Female Skew in Surveys

Some public opinion polls and cultural studies suggest:

• Women are at least as likely—and in some cases more likely—to believe in the existence of creatures like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

• In a 2001 Gallup poll, 29% of women vs. 26% of men said they believed Bigfoot might be real.

• Belief in mystery creatures (like Chupacabra, Nessie, Yeti) often clusters with other paranormal or cryptozoological beliefs—fields where women report more belief overall.

This fits broader patterns:

• Women are more open to mystery, myth, and paranormal possibilities.

• These beliefs often tie into narrative-driven, intuitive worldviews.

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🥾 Bigfoot “Research” Culture: Strongly Male-Dominated

In contrast, when you look at:

• Field researchers

• Cryptozoologists

• Podcast hosts

• YouTube investigators

• DIY expeditions

…this space is heavily male—often with a rugged, survivalist or skeptical-adventurer flavor.

Why is that?

Factor	How It Skews Male
Outdoor exploration	Cultural links to masculinity, survivalism, “conquering wilderness”
Technical gear & evidence collecting	Emphasis on cameras, casts, audio—tied to “proof” and control
Skeptical curiosity or cryptoscience	Often appeals to male pattern of curiosity without belief
Pop-culture tropes	Bigfoot as primal challenge, lone male vs. wilderness (e.g., Expedition Bigfoot)

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👩‍🦱 Female Bigfoot Believers

Among women who do engage with Bigfoot, the framing often leans toward:

• Personal encounters

• Family lore

• Nature-connected spirituality

• Trauma + anomalous experiences

• Interest in folklore, myth, and archetypes

Bigfoot, in this context, can become a mystical being, a symbol of the unknown, or part of earth-based spiritual storytelling.

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📚 Academic/Cultural Commentary

• Joshua Blu Buhs (Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend) notes that Bigfoot belief has both scientific and mythic layers. The “monster hunting” side is male-coded, but the mythic-symbolic side has wider appeal.

• Carol Clover (in feminist horror theory) has shown how the "monster" is often a lens for social or gendered anxiety. Women might interpret cryptids like Bigfoot in less literal but more symbolic or intuitive terms.

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🧩 Summary

Aspect	Women	Men
General belief in Bigfoot	Fairly common; sometimes more than men	Fairly common
Active field research, expeditions	Rare	Very common
Framing	Symbolic, mystical, folklore-based	Empirical, challenge-based, “proof”-oriented
Related beliefs	Paranormal, psychic, spiritual	Cryptozoology, conspiracies, survivalism

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Would you like a comparison to UFO beliefs by gender, or how Bigfoot belief overlaps with spiritual or environmental values?

What does "narrative-driven" mean?

"Narrative-driven" means guided or shaped by storytelling, rather than by purely logical, analytical, or abstract reasoning. In psychology, religion, and even belief systems (like paranormal or spiritual beliefs), it describes a mindset that organizes the world in terms of stories, characters, meanings, and emotional arcs.

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🔍 In More Detail:

Narrative-driven thinking involves:

• Looking for coherent stories that explain events

• Using symbols and metaphors to find meaning

• Prioritizing subjective experience, emotion, and intuition

• Seeking personal or moral lessons in what happens

This is different from analytical or data-driven thinking, which emphasizes:

• Logical consistency

• Empirical evidence

• Cause and effect

• Abstraction and detachment

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📚 Examples of Narrative-Driven Thinking

Example	Explanation
"I saw a ghost and I think it was my grandmother watching over me."	Interprets a strange event in a story-like way with emotional significance
"Bigfoot lives in the forest because he represents nature's mystery."	Mythic-symbolic framing, not necessarily literal
"I had a dream about a plane crash, and then one happened—that can’t be coincidence!"	Weaving meaning into coincidence; connecting events into a meaningful arc

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🧠 Who Tends to Think Narratively?

• Most humans do, to some extent—narratives help us make sense of the world.

• But certain groups tend to rely more on narrative thinking:

  • Children and adolescents

  • Fantasy-prone individuals

  • People high in absorption or emotional sensitivity

  • Artists, religious mystics, and paranormal believers

  • People processing trauma or grief

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🧘‍♀️ Spiritual & Paranormal Belief Systems

Many spiritual and paranormal worldviews are narrative-rich:

• Ghost stories

• Near-death experiences

• Alien abduction tales

• Synchronicity and fate

• Prophetic dreams or visions

These stories often provide comfort, identity, or a sense of cosmic order.

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🎭 In Contrast: Analytical Thinking

A more analytic or skeptical person might hear the same ghost story and say:

• “That was probably sleep paralysis.”

• “You were grieving, so your brain produced a comforting hallucination.”

This isn't about one style being better—it’s about how people make meaning from unusual or ambiguous experiences.

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Would you like a chart comparing narrative-driven vs analytical thinking, or examples of how each influences belief in the paranormal or religion?

Do men observe, report and believe in UFOs and UFOlogy more than women?

Yes — in general, men are more likely than women to:

1. Believe in UFOs as extraterrestrial spacecraft

2. Report sightings of UFOs

3. Be involved in UFOlogy, including investigation, theorizing, and community leadership

This gender pattern is supported by surveys, academic studies, and sociological analyses of the UFO subculture.

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📊 Survey and Study Data

➤ Belief in UFOs / Aliens

• A 2017 Chapman University survey in the U.S. showed:

  • 35–40% of men believe aliens have visited Earth

  • 25–30% of women believe the same

➤ Reporting UFO Sightings

• According to MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) and NUFORC (National UFO Reporting Center), over 70–80% of UFO sighting reports are filed by men

• Men are more likely to provide detailed descriptions, maps, and diagrams with their reports

➤ Involvement in UFOlogy

• Most well-known UFO researchers, authors, and theorists are men

  • Examples: Jacques Vallée, Stanton Friedman, Bob Lazar, Richard Dolan, George Knapp

• Conferences, forums, and podcasts are heavily male-dominated

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🔍 Why Is This?

🧠 Cognitive Styles

Trait	Men (on average)	Women (on average)
Systemizing (mechanical/explanatory focus)	Higher	Lower
Empathizing (emotional/relational focus)	Lower	Higher

UFOlogy often involves:

• Technical speculation (e.g., propulsion systems, radar)

• Conspiracy theories

• Cold War-era government secrecy

• A “detective” or “debunker” mindset

This systemizing focus tends to attract male brains more than female ones.

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🕵️‍♂️ Cultural Framing

• UFOs are often framed as:

  • Technological mysteries

  • Linked to military secrecy or alien surveillance

  • A domain of rational investigation and heroic discovery

This framing is culturally coded as male, especially in Western contexts.

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👩‍🦱 Female Engagement with UFOs

Women do engage with UFOs, but often:

• Through abduction narratives (e.g., Betty Hill, Whitley Strieber’s accounts)

• As part of experiential or spiritual belief systems (e.g., New Age contactees, starseed beliefs)

• In UFO stories that blend trauma, mysticism, and healing

This contrasts with the nuts-and-bolts approach common in male-dominated UFOlogy.

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📚 Academic Insight

• Historian David Jacobs noted that abduction stories in the 1980s–90s often came from women, and featured more emotional, symbolic, and bodily elements.

• Anthropologist Diana Pasulka points out that women are increasingly present in modern “techno-mystical” UFO belief systems, especially where AI, consciousness, and aliens intersect.

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🧩 Summary

Area	Men	Women
Believe in UFOs (extraterrestrial)	✅ More likely	⚪ Less likely
Report sightings	✅ More likely	⚪ Less likely
Join UFOlogy communities	✅ More often	⚪ Rarely
Abduction stories / emotional content	⚪ Less common	✅ More common
Tech/secret government angle	✅ Popular	⚪ Less central

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Would you like to compare this to ghost beliefs, or explore how UFO experiences differ by gender in reported cases?

Ghost beliefs, please.

Great choice — beliefs in ghosts and spirit encounters show a very different gender pattern from UFO beliefs.

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👻 Ghost Beliefs: More Common Among Women

Across numerous surveys and studies, women are significantly more likely than men to:

1. Believe in ghosts or spirits of the dead

2. Report paranormal experiences like hauntings, visitations, or sensing presences

3. Be involved in ghost-hunting, spiritualism, or mediumship

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📊 Data Snapshot

Belief/Experience	Women	Men
Believe in ghosts	~45–55%	~30–40%
Believe in life after death	~65%	~50%
Report seeing/sensing a spirit	2x more likely	Less likely
Attend spiritualist events / séances	Dominated by women	Minority
Work as mediums / psychic practitioners	Vast majority	Few

For example:

• A 2005 Gallup poll found 51% of U.S. women believe in ghosts, compared to 37% of men.

• In ghost-hunting TV shows, while male investigators often take the lead, many teams include women who report more intense emotional or psychic experiences.

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🧠 Why Are Ghost Beliefs More Prevalent in Women?

1. Higher Fantasy-Proneness & Absorption

• Psychological studies find women score higher on average in:

  • Fantasy proneness (immersiveness in imagination)

  • Absorption (deep involvement in sensory or emotional experiences)

These traits correlate strongly with reports of paranormal experiences, especially involving ghosts, spirits, or signs from the afterlife.

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2. Social and Emotional Orientation

• Women often have stronger interpersonal and emotional awareness

• Ghosts are frequently interpreted as:

  • Loved ones who have died

  • Unfinished emotional ties

  • Sentimental or protective presences

This emotional resonance may make ghost beliefs more personally meaningful and socially acceptable for women.

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3. Spirituality & Religion

• Women also tend to be more religious or spiritual overall, which often blends with ghost beliefs (e.g., angels, spirits, afterlife communication)

• Many cultures associate women with healing, intuition, and caregiving, roles that carry over into spiritualist practices

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4. Cultural Roles in Mediumship

• Throughout history, most spirit mediums have been women

  • Victorian séances were often led by women

  • Modern-day psychics and ghost tour guides are disproportionately female

• Spiritualism provided women in the 19th–20th centuries with a socially acceptable path to public speaking, leadership, and financial independence

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⚖️ Summary: Ghosts vs UFOs by Gender

Feature	Ghost Beliefs	UFO Beliefs
More common in...	Women	Men
Motivated by...	Emotion, spirituality, connection	Curiosity, secrecy, tech
Typical context	Death, memory, grief, intuition	Surveillance, abduction, disclosure
Common narrative style	Personal, emotional, symbolic	Investigative, mechanical, skeptical
Pop culture examples	The Sixth Sense, Medium	The X-Files, Close Encounters

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Would you like to explore how this plays out in New Age spirituality, or how gender affects reports of near-death experiences or spirit communication?