Parapsychology and Researching the UAP Experience
Eric Ouellet
World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research
Summary
Argues that parapsychological methods, frameworks, and empirical findings should be formally integrated into UAP research. Reviews the theoretical overlap between psi phenomena and UAP experiencer accounts, and proposes methodological bridges between the two research traditions. A significant call for cross-disciplinary synthesis directly relevant to DECUR's parapsychology coverage.
Abstract
This paper is illustrating that the present-day regained interest in UFO/UAP is still driven by older materialist assumptions and a wishful quest to prove a putative extraterrestrial explanation for UAPs. It highlights that institutional biases from national security agencies interested in UAP have transited in many of the most common assumptions found in the study of UAP, and how problematic this is. It also situates epistemologically and ontologically the parapsychological approach to the study of UAP by presenting a contrast with materialist approaches and the ones inspired by psychical research. One of the main differences is the notion that experiencers are active participants in UAP experiences, and such experiences are oftentimes meaningful but at the unconscious level, a realm difficult to study in itself and where careful and complex, but never final, interpretations are required.
Citation
Eric Ouellet. (2025). World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research. DOI: 10.1080/02604027.2025.2592182
https://doi.org/10.1080/02604027.2025.2592182