October 14, 2008
Channelling Colonel Saunders:
Shirley Ghostman is a TV psychic whose guests are completely unaware that he's a spoof and his over-the-top antics are just the creation of comedian Marc Wootton.
In one episode he goes up against well-known psychologist and skeptic Chris French whose dry responses turn out to be funnier than Ghostman's camp send-up.
French is head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmith's College in London, which studies the psychological attributes that lead people to believe in the paranormal.
Some of the unit's publications are online in their archive although you'll have to wait for one of the best, "The 'Haunt' Project: An attempt to build a 'haunted' room by manipulating complex electromagnetic fields and infrasound", as it's soon to be published in a special edition of the neuropsychology journal Cortex.
Link to Shirtley Ghostman vs a wonderfully sarcastic Chris French.
