Ordsall Hall Paranormal Study

A study to investigate the science of human behavior/belief and examine relationships between environmental features, design and paranormal phenomena. 

Ordsall Hall was the site for a series of public events where participants were invited to take part in a scientific study alongside students and researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University to investigate reported paranormal sightings. After an introductory briefing and talk about the history of the hall, groups were guided around the building to determine the validity of such claims and encounters. 

For the exploration, participants were placed into small groups and asked to explore specified locations. At the end of the investigation there was a talk to contextualise the event alongside current parapsychological practices and the opportunity for to feedback and discuss their experiences.

This study will collected data measuring psychological and parapsychological perceptions and cognitions of buildings and locations reported to be haunted. Participants were taken on a tour of the building through a series of locations that have either been identified as having reported paranormal activity or are neutral spaces. Responses to these locations were captured through a questionnaire in order to document experiences, also to establish psychometric parameters to help frame research data, for example questions will use the Australian Sheep Goat Scale (ASGS) (Thalbourne and Delin, 1993), Haunting short scale (8 items) (Drinkwater et al., 2015) and the Survey of Anomalous Experiences (Irwin, Dagnall & Drinkwater, 2013). 

The study has helped to identify factors that influence the perception of anomalous occurrences and to define and translate subjective and analytical data into the development of new design concepts/parameters. 

A link to Ordsall Hall: https://ordsallhall.com

Article on the study: https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/hpsc/news-and-media/news/story/?id=8743