What is it about?
This paper creates simple, practical tools to study people who keep having “ghostly” experiences without assuming they are mentally ill. The authors used AI to write a clear example story showing the typical pattern of Haunted People Syndrome (HP‑S), made a short seven‑item checklist (HP‑S RPS) to rate key features, and turned that checklist into a plain, structured interview clinicians can use. Together these tools describe how many such cases involve clusters of unusual sights, sounds, or feelings that happen during stress, feel intentional, and are explained through a person’s beliefs. The goal is to help professionals ask consistent, respectful questions, tell culturally meaningful experiences apart from psychiatric problems, and gather research data more reliably. The authors note the tools are early‑stage: they need testing, cultural adaptation, and careful human oversight, but they offer a helpful, nonjudgmental way to improve assessment and care.
Featured Image
Photo by Dark Narrative. on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This work is timely and novel because it combines three advances rarely brought together for studying anomalous experiences: (1) the use of modern large‑language AI to produce a consistent, theory‑grounded prototype that captures complex, multi‑modal phenomenology; (2) a compact, clinician‑friendly rating scale and structured interview that translate that prototype into usable assessment practice; and (3) an explicit biopsychosocial framework that treats recurring “ghostly” episodes as patterned, meaningful responses to stress and sensitivity rather than as automatic evidence of severe psychopathology. At a moment when clinicians, researchers, and the public are encountering more reports shaped by new technologies, social media, and diverse cultural narratives, these modular tools make it easier to evaluate, compare, and respond to cases in a standardized, nonjudgmental way—while still calling for careful validation, cultural adaptation, and human oversight.
Perspectives
I’ve spent decades listening to people whose lives have been quietly upended by recurring, uncanny events. What this paper does—using an AI‑generated prototype, a simple checklist, and a structured interview—isn’t about proving or disproving the supernatural; it’s about taking those accounts seriously while remaining rigorous. My view is straightforward: many of these episodes crop up with a consistent texture—sensitive people, moments of stress or illness, and specific places or situations that seem to “wake” the phenomena. That pattern suggests we’re often encountering the right people in the right settings for these experiences to emerge. So we should respect the lived reality of reportants, honor their meaning‑making, and investigate with tools that distinguish cultural, psychological, and environmental contributors rather than defaulting to dismissal or pathologizing. This work aims to give clinicians and researchers a humane, practical way to do exactly that.
James Houran
Integrated Knowledge Systems
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Prototyping Haunted People Syndrome: Artificial intelligence-generated narrative, structured interview, and clinical validation., Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice, November 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/cns0000447.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
