![paranormal phenomena paranormal phenomena](https://d1nz104zbf64va.cloudfront.net/dt/a/o/552fa04aa52511157e8b50f4.jpg)
![paranormal phenomena paranormal phenomena](http://unexplained.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Aztec.jpg)
from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Dr. With a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an M.D. Jim Tucker, a Bonner-Lowry Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, is one such scientist. DOPS is home to a small group of hardworking, impressively credentialed scientists with minds for stats and figures.ĭr. The teachers can’t read minds, and the students don’t walk through walls. But unlike the X-Mansion, or other fictional psy-schools, DOPS doesn’t employ any practicing psychics. What sorts of “phenomena” qualify? Largely your typical catalog of Forteana: ESP, poltergeists, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, “claimed memories of past lives.” So yes: In 2014, there is a center for paranormal research at a totally legitimate (and respected) American institution of higher learning. Ian Stevenson-originally as the Division of Personality Studies-its mission is “the scientific empirical investigation of phenomena that suggest that currently accepted scientific assumptions and theories about the nature of mind or consciousness, and its relation to matter, may be incomplete.” "Survival of personality after death" is something like a law of conservation of energy applied to human consciousness. The Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine is decidedly less fantastic than either Julavits’s or Marvel’s creations, but it's nevertheless a fascinating place. And, of course, there’s Professor X’s School for Gifted Youngsters-Marvel’s take on Andover or Choate-where teachers read minds and students pass like ghosts through ivy-covered walls. There’s Heidi Julavits’s widely acclaimed 2012 novel The Vanishers, which takes place at a New England college for aspiring Sylvia Brownes. The market for stories of paranormal academe is a rich one.