The following is adapted from my talk at the in Brussels on 10th August 1990.
This was the second occasion at which I have spoken at a CSICOP conference, the first being in 1983 in Buffalo. That too was on the subject of Belief in the Paranormal in the United Kingdom. On both occasions I had the same quandary: Just how can we judge the level of belief in the paranormal among the general public? I couldn't see how I could change my 1983 presentation in which I reported the result of an opinion poll and told how the UK media present stories of the paranormal. Lets look at the most recent opinion polls.
A poll conducted for the 1987 Channel 4 programme 'Is There Anybody There?' produced the following figures:
60% said it is possible to communicate by telepathy
59% think that certain houses have ghosts
59% believe that dreams can foretell the future
45% think that there are people who remember previous incarnations
30% accept that the dead can send us messages
A total of nearly nine out of ten people believed strongly in at least one of these phenomena.
I have compared the above figures with those contained in the 1989 book called 'Are You Normal?' which Toby Howard reported on in the last issue of 'The Skeptic'. The book claims to give details of what 60,000 British adults think about a wide range of issues, including the paranormal. Their figure of 60,000 might be misleading though, for it isn't clear that this number of people were asked about all subjects covered in the book. Their reported percentages for our purpose show that:
25% believe in ghosts.
40% accept some form of survival after death. This sub-divides into over 50% of women and about a third of the men interviewed.
25% believe in reincarnation.
Over 50% believe in telepathy, again with more women than men tending to do so.
Over 50% believe in predictions
23% believe in horoscopes, women being twice as likely as men to believe what they read about their 'stars'
25% have paid to have their fortune told.
20% think that flying saucers are real.
Oddly enough, only about 35% believe in hypnosis, a figure which surprises me. I would expect it to be much higher, nearly 100%.
As you can see these polls show two contradictions and two similarities. In the first, 59% believed certain houses have ghosts, but in the second only 25% believed in ghosts. 45% believed that people can remember previous incarnations in the 1987 poll, but only 25% believed in reincarnation in the second poll. The figures for telepathy, and predictions are fairly close. 'Are You Normal?' didn't give precise figures, but actually said 'over half' believed in these phenomena.
My presentation of media coverage of the paranormal was based only on my personal experience. With my keen interest in paranormal subjects I notice media coverage which anyone not so interested might miss. Such people might end up with a completely different picture.
Until the beginning of 1990 the BBC probably broadcast the greatest number of paranormal programmes, but then Thames Television made a series of nearly twenty half-hour programmes, each dealing with a single subject. Every programme included a skeptic, among them Dr. Susan Blackmore and Professor David Marks. Outwardly a non-biased programme the introductions were clearly partisan with introductory statements like 'Welcome to 'Stories in the Night' a series which takes a major look at the paranormal, an area which often leaves science lost for an explanation'. And one of the so-called skeptics argued that a medium doesn't obtain information from the dead - but by using ESP. Enough said?
Many UK newspapers and magazines - especially women's magazines, which is perhaps why more women tend to believe - carry stories about ghosts, psychics, astrologers, and alternative medicine. With the exception of the latter, stories in newspapers are mainly confined to the popular tabloids like 'The Sun' and 'The News of the World'. The next trend is possibly going to be the use of psychics to answer peoples' personal problems. The magazine 'Me' has such a column called 'Susan King's Psychic Helpline'.
In my opinion though, the worst offender in promoting belief in the paranormal is a the London radio station Talkback Radio. Specialising in news and talk programmes the station devotes at least three hours a week, and perhaps as many as five or six hours to the paranormal and alternative medicine. One of their most popular programmes involves a 'psychic counsellor' who I have heard advise some women to give-up their boy friends and others to move abroad. At one time he gave medical advice too, but after a complaint from me the IBA and LBC told him to stop doing so. The Editorial Director of the station wrote to tell me that there is 'a place for a little more light-hearted amusement' and that their listeners are 'intelligent enough to make up their own minds on these matters'. But with absolutely no skeptical voice on the station, I wonder how they can be expected to do so.
I have also taken a look at my own trade, book publishing. The UK trade magazine 'The Bookseller' considered New Age publishing so significant that in March last year it included two articles on the subject. Although reference was made to 'a life-enhancing trend that looks set to become a sales phenomenon', one bookshop buyer reported 'a very clear decline in interest in the occult area'.
This apparent contradiction might be a question of semantics; what is meant by 'occult'? 'The Bookseller' has such a category in its weekly listings of new books. In the seven editions between 15th June and 27th July this year they listed between 54 and 88 new titles, depending upon whether you count separate sun sign books as one book or twelve. (Each sun sign book only appeals to about one twelfth of the market.) Full page advertisements for New Age-type books can also be seen in 'The Bookseller'.
With all this promotion, it is not surprising that the opinion polls have shown a fairly high level of belief in the paranormal in the United Kingdom. 'Are You Normal?' says that 'The notion of the paranormal is strong.' Skeptics have a lot of hard work to do to redress the balance.