Cyborg Phantoms : How Digital Culture Is Reshaping Paranormal Experiences

Revealing how the Screen Age is changing our paranormal, spiritual, and hallucinatory encounters

Revealing how the Screen Age is changing our paranormal, spiritual, and hallucinatory encounters• Describes paranormal and hallucinatory experiences specific to our time, such as apparitions of cartoons, celebrities, screens, and phantom cell phone ringing • Uncovers the cyborg anthropology of the supernatural, by exploring the effects of television, video games and the internet on paranormal encounters • Examines the neurological effects of screens on our psyches as well as medical and scientific explanations for Screen Age phantom encounters Just as society and technology evolve, so too do our anomalous experiences. In this exploration, Samantha Lee Treasure examines accounts of paranormal phenomena and hallucinations from around the world that illustrate the effects our screens and media-saturated environment have on both the psyche and the supernatural. Drawing on interviews and scientific studies, the author describes encounters with cartoon and celebrity apparitions, phantom screens, phantom cell phone ringing, and immersion in technological psychedelic realms. Looking at occurrences across a variety of states of consciousness, she details accounts of sleep paralysis demons holding iPads, and animated entities in out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and the intensely vivid hallucinations known as Charles Bonnet syndrome, which can occur among people with vision loss. Treasure explores the effects of television, video games, social media, and the internet on paranormal encounters, including induced synesthesia and the intentional and unintentional creation of egregores and tulpas. She looks at how occult practices are changing, such as the development of “shifting,” which is the use of altered states to enter fictional worlds like the Harry Potter universe. She also examines the neurological effects of screens on our psyches as well as possible scientific explanations for Screen Age phantom encounters and phantom perceptions. By tracing how paranormal experiences have changed over the past fifty years, Treasure helps us imagine how future cultural changes will continue to reshape our perceptions of the paranormal.