The Invisible Ghost: Apparitional Observation & Inattentional Blindness

No less an authority than Dan Simons (of Invisible Gorilla fame) draws our attention to a quirky study by Cantabrigian parapsychologist Anthony D. Cornell. A study which, forty years before the failure to notice something clearly visible because attention is elsewhere focused would gain recognition and a name in Mack and Rock’s monograph Inattentional Blindness (1988), documented the phenomena in real-life. Somewhat ironically, however, Tony failed to see it as his attention was focused on other things.

Tony’s experiment, originally intended to explore inaccuracies in eyewitness testimony, involved members of the CUSRP* staging a carefully choregraphed ghost walk along the Backs behind King’s College for six nights in May 1958. This involved one of them (Tony himself on three of those nights) popping up from behind a mound covered in a white sheet at twilight, wondering around for 4½ minutes, and then dropping down and shuffling off before the pubs closed. Meanwhile the other members stood on watch to record reactions.

The experiment went about as well as could be expected, with precisely none of the estimated 70 to 80 potential witnesses reacting in any way whatsoever. Tony, somewhat over-hastily, rejects the possibility that no one actually saw it, surmising that only possible if they hadn’t wanted to see it. He also dismisses the possibility that they saw it but didn't consider it abnormal, as even Cambridge students aren’t that weird. Which only leaves him the conclusion that they just didn’t consider it paranormal, but that still doesn't explain their apparent failure to react.

It is at this point that Tony, unfortunately, lurches into the heady realms of woo, putting the perceived failure of his prospective percipients to see anything supernatural (nor indeed at all) in his shenanigans down to the absence of a subtle psi-factor he claims to be always present in “genuine” apparitional experiences. They failed to perceive the ghost, concludes Tony, because there was no psychical agency present, neither within themselves nor without in the local environment, to specifically draw their attention to such a phenomenon.

The true significance inattentional blindness in this context was later noted in studies by Anne Richards, Moa Gunnarsson Hellgren and Chris French in 2014, which discovered it positively correlates with absorption (highly focused attentional state) and paranormal belief, while negatively correlating with working memory capacity. It has thus been suggested that some such experiences could be put down to paranormal causes simply because the experiencer missed the real cause through intentional blindness. This supports the unfortunately pejorative sounding cognitive deficit hypothesis for paranormal belief.

Rather than drawing a moral from all of this, I will instead pause to ponder the rather disturbing possibility, which Tony flippantly raises in passing, that, according to his research, we could be surrounded by all manner of ghosties and ghoulies and long leggedy beasties which we just don’t notice. Fortunately, Tony’s endearingly entertaining experiments into apparitional observations do not end here, so it being in the spirit of the spooky season, I’ll hold off on dealing with that until the sequel (which, it should be noted, will be X-rated).

*Cambridge University Society for Research in Parapsychology

Source: Cornell, A.D. (1959) 'An experiment in apparitional observation and findings', Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 40 (701), pp. 120-124.

We discussed some more of Tony's research as part of our 2021 Halloween special on the seemingly pseudoscientific ideas put forward to explain the phenomenon known as ghosts on Cambridge Skeptics: Live!