The shorter days, cooler nights and turning leaves of fall moving toward Halloween have long had a haunting effect on people, but the haunting is perhaps more significant for some than others.
Those with a particularly sensitive profile of health, life experience and personality traits are far more likely than others to report an experience in which they saw, felt, heard or otherwise sensed something they should not have been able to sense through normal physical means, a recent study suggests.
Michael Jawer, director of the Emotional Gateway Research Center in Vienna, Va., investigates, among other things, if there are biological traits in the brain and the rest of the body that contribute to paranormal perception.
He surveyed 62 self-described “sensitives” — people who report long-standing allergies, chronic pain and fatigue, depression, migraine headaches or sensitivity to light, sound or smell. Jawer compared their characteristics and experiences with 50 other people who didn’t have such chronic medical conditions or sensitivity.
It turned out that those in the sensitive category were more than three times likelier to say they’d had an “apparitional experience” than the control group. And they were more than twice as likely to indicate that a close family member was affected by similar physical, mental or emotional conditions.
“It seems quite possible that certain individuals are, from birth onward, disposed to a number of conditions, illnesses and perceptions that, in novelty as well as intensity, distinguish them from the general population,” Jawer wrote in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, a British group founded more than 130 years ago. It studies “anomalous perceptions.”Overall, about three-quarters of the sensitive group — 82 percent of the women and 55 percent of the men — said they’d had at least one unusual perception experience compared to just 16 percent of the control group.
Men were more likely to mention having a visual experience, while at least a fifth of the sensitive women said they’d had, alone or in combination, a visual experience, a general sense of a “presence,” heard or smelled something, or had an experience that involved lights or energy.
Meanwhile, at the National Sleep Foundation in Washington, experts are offering All Hallow Even advice to parents about how to keep their little ghosties and goblins from turning into sleep-deprived beasts come Nov. 1.
Halloween is just two days after kids theoretically can gain an hour of sleep from the end of daylight-saving time, but they may still be in the midst of adjusting their biological clocks to what amounts to an earlier bedtime. That, coupled with the excitement of trick-or-treating, can make it tough for kids to settle down.
“Parents need to ensure that their kids get the sleep they need, especially during this transition,” said Dr. Jodi Mindell, a pediatric sleep specialist at Saint Joseph’s Medical Center in Philadelphia and vice chairman of the sleep foundation.Among the suggestions:
• Plan to start trick-or-treating early and let your kids know that even with the holiday, they’ll be getting to bed on time.
• Limit candy sampling and watch out for drinks with caffeine.
• Maybe set aside the end-of-evening candy dump for the next night.
• Avoid decorating your child’s room with anything that’s so scary or exciting that it might prompt worry or nightmares.
• And build in enough time at the end of the night to wind down with a regular bedtime routine that includes a bath or story, preferably sans ghosts.
source: uburbanchicagonews.com
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