Hi All,

The psychology department at Durham University is currently running an online survey, and we are particularly interested in recruiting people who take part in extreme outdoor activities. If you have experience in spelunking, mountaineering, climbing or any other kind of extreme outdoor activity, we would be very grateful if you could take part in the survey, which is linked below:

Link to survey: https://durham.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/felt-presences-extreme-sports

Anybody aged 18-75 can take part, and it should only take around 15-20 minutes to complete.

The survey is about experiences of ?felt presence?, the feeling that someone is present even when they cannot be heard, seen or touched. This phenomenon has been reported frequently by people who take part in extreme sports. Until now, it has never been studied systematically in this population. More information about the research topic is provided on the front page of the survey, and the lead investigator has also written articles about the topic for The Psychologist and The Guardian.

If you would like more information about the study, or have any questions, please don?t hesitate to contact me. You can reach me at jamie.a.moffatt@durham.ac.uk.

Best wishes,
Jamie Moffatt

Well, as far as I'm concerened, that's soon dealt with, with a big fat NO.

Is caving extreme?  How did you arrive at this conclusion?

You may well do a lot better with the mine exploration community, mines being man made, spirit of the old miners etc.
Try your query on aditnow.

I, for the record am well known for solo exploration and spend long hours underground working on my own. Longest was 10.5 hours.
I was absolutely useless all the next day!

Anyway, cant say that I ever felt any 'presences', sorry.
I dont want to start any argument but my take on it is the same as UFOs.
People who believe in them and want to see them will see them.

I'm sure I've heard several cavers talk about feeling a presence in a cave.  Peak district cavers in particular have spoken about feeling the presence of 't'old man' and others have spoken about 'warnings' of impending doom etc etc

I've 'heard' people in caves when there was no one there, but I couldn't say I have ever felt a presence.

You will find that many cavers, especially solo explorers, have "heard" non-existent people. This is a sensory trick, usually involving running water, not a psychological or supernatural phenomena.

Like roy, I spend a lot of time in solo survey, digging, and exploration and have never felt any "presence".

I am curious to know what the goals and preconceptions behind this survey are. As a social volunteer I have found that many people who share stories of such feelings are often under the double influence of psychological/mental illness and religious misinformation.

what's "spelunking" ?

Why is participation by people over 75 not allowed? 

Kenilworth said:

You will find that many cavers, especially solo explorers, have "heard" non-existent people. This is a sensory trick, usually involving running water, not a psychological or supernatural phenomena.

Like roy, I spend a lot of time in solo survey, digging, and exploration and have never felt any "presence".

I am curious to know what the goals and preconceptions behind this survey are. As a social volunteer I have found that many people who share stories of such feelings are often under the double influence of psychological/mental illness and religious misinformation.

Click to expand...

or other influences
A lot of spirits probably come out of bottles.

BradW said:

Why is participation by people over 75 not allowed? 

Click to expand...

'cos we're senile and we hear voices all the time  :blink:

You're all talking about ghosts, or in the case of Kenilworth auditory pareidolia (we've all heard the water voices caving on our own!)

This is not what the study is about, which you'd find out with a quick Google instead of slating folk. "Third man" or "felt presense" is a psychological phenomena - felt by folks like Ernest Shackleton. In 1933, Frank Smythe on his solo ascent of Everest even offered his felt presence a piece of cake. It is hypothesised to occur in states of exhaustion when the body is in environments of sensory deprivation e.g a snowy landscape or a dark hole.

Here is an academic paper about which I will happily email to anyone who doesn't have institutional access if they'd like to read the whole thing http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(14)01212-3

It isn't immediately clear what the study is about. I read the survey, and it seems to ask the individual to provide context beyond the sensory. Beliefs and mental capacity may be the difference between a vaguely unsettled feeling and the identification of that feeling as a presence.

I would like to read the paper 2xw, and will pm my email

Not sure if this is relevant, but as you duck from St John's Bell to Great Bell in Swildon's, there was for several years a glove part buried in the silt, it looked like a hand reaching up out of the gloom.

Now,  normally I'm the first person to grab a bit of free gear that's been abandoned in a cave, but I've never been bold enough to swim down and grab that glove, just in case there is a hand in it! 

I assume they want responses from a range of cavers not just those who do feel they have experienced a 'felt presence'. It doesn't take much longer to do than responding on here, so why not give them the benefit of your experience?

Cave_Troll said:

what's "spelunking" ?

Click to expand...

An american term for sport caving, derived from speleology which is the term for the scientific study of any aspect caves and caving.

ah.... American.....

Done a fair bit of paranormal investigations in my time.  No evidence of real ghosts as yet unfortunately. However plenty relating to environmental conditions e.g. draughts, very dry air (feeling something is touching your hair), pareidolia, strong electromagnetic fields (controversial but the trifled meters have detected strong fields fields with near overhead cables, odd wiring, and substations several times and these were associated with reports of events and odd feelings before the fields were measured. Perhaps some people are more sensitive to electro-magnetic than others?), pre-disposition to checking the faeries and goblins instead of the fuse box, pre-suggestion (if someone says it's haunted then a creak isn't the plumbing it's the headless horseman...), very low frequencies, nutters, and so on. Also there's the good old fear of the dark - a powerful emotion.  Some people have said that they have felt a presence (and not the Star Wars Jedi type!), which then leads them to various suppositions.
There again there are some things that still have to be properly explained such as the Enfield Poltergeist.  Supernatural is most likely the natural that hasn't been properly explained yet.
Most Haunted and similar associated TV stuff is, well TV fluff.
Eastwater is well creepy though, and I think odd things in Sandford Levvy have been reported.

She might be talking about an actual physiological experience some people get after extreme fatigue the feeling that someone is there with you even-though you know they are not. It's probably some sort of compensating thing. I can't say I have ever heard of caver's experiencing it but I know of at least one super-alpinest who has.

As a full bore scientist, I think this is all a load of rubbish.

But, I have some proper paranormal stories!

Ive just got through 80% of the questionaire. Jeez! You could have said "1a - do you have scars on your head where the bad people have chopped out parts of your brain?"