West Coast Ghost and Paranormal Society

Everyone communicates non-verbally every minute of every day.  People in need of human touch often play with their hair or rub their arms and legs which sends the signal nonverbally they are open to being touched.  Conversely people who are feeling insecure, defensive or submissive often cross their arms and legs, sending the non-verbal signal to back off.  The field of psychology has been using body language as a tool for assessment for years. There is a whole field in law enforcement using psychological profiling, and one technique is understanding and interpreting unconscious body language.  Witness the show “Lie to Me”: it is based in fact. There are, however, some myths about body language which must be addressed.  For example, people with a pathological need to lie can, in fact, look you straight in the eye and tell a lie as if it were the truth, mainly because they are usually sociopaths and believe their own lies.  So one must look for other non-verbal clues that a person is expressing, such as touching or rubbing of the nose when speaking, looking to the left when speaking, sweating, increase in heart rate, muscle twitches in the jaw or neck area, lowering of the head after a statement, increase in pitch vocally – these are all signs the speaker is either doubtful of what they have said or is flat out lying.

Sometimes people lie, sometimes people “exaggerate”.  Why?  Well, it could be a family of origin culture event.  In some families, outrageous stories are rewarded with attention and adoration.  The story becomes more elaborate and detailed with each telling. This is done for attention seeking.  Usually the behavior is not rewarded outside of the family but the person continues to embellish hoping to receive the adoration and attention he or she got within the family of origin.  The behavior continues until peers reject them for lying.  Usually, this behavior goes hand in hand with some other major personality disorder.  The four major personality disorders are Histrionic (think drama king or queen), Paranoid (everyone is out to get me!), Narcissistic (it is ALL about ME! And they aren’t kidding!) and Anti-Social (think mass killers with no empathy like Bundy or Dahmer).  There is also every mental health worker’s nightmare – borderline personality disorder, in which the client has strong traits of all four of the major personality disorders!  The only known treatment that has any efficacy for a personality disorder is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.  Some studies suggest that personality disorders either disappear or fade moderately by middle age.  The theory is the person suffering from the personality disorder is away from the family of origin and the payoff for the maladaptive behavior is no longer there, so the maladaptive behavior is stopped or greatly reduced.

There are many mental and physical conditions which could cause a person to see or hear things which are simply not there.  There is illicit drug induced psychosis (in which people see “shadow people”).  Also, abuse of alcohol (which if it was discovered today would be a class one narcotic and therefore illegal) can cause hallucinations both auditory and visual.  What people are not aware of is Caffeine psychosis.  With the advent of “energy” drinks, more people are experiencing caffeine overdosing.  Mental conditions, such as bi-polar with psychotic features, can cause auditory and visual hallucinations.  Schizophrenia (not to be confused with Multiple Personality Disorder, although you can have both at the same time) can cause the sufferer to have a running dialogue, in stereo, between God and Satan at full volume with command hallucinations (in other words the voices will tell the person to do something or die).  Over the counter drugs, if abused, can cause hallucinations. Prescription drugs can cause hallucinations.  Some drugs, such as Valium and Ambien, act as amnesiatics.  The user takes the drug and essential blacks out, but the body is still ambulatory and will have no recollection of what happened in the intervening hours.  Undiagnosed medical conditions such as diabetes can cause auditory and visual hallucinations.  Brain tumors can cause auditory and visual hallucinations.  Imbalances in electrolytes can cause hallucinations.  Dehydration can cause hallucinations.  These are among the many, many physical and mental conditions along with legal and illegal drugs that can cause auditory and visual hallucinations.  If we investigate paranormal activity and claims by taking a look at the psychological aspects that may be present, then we may be able to find reasonable explanations for the haunting claims.