About Me
Christopher Laursen holds a PhD in History from the University of British Columbia (2016). In his doctoral dissertation on the making of the psychokinesis hypothesis of the poltergeist phenomenon, Christopher examined the history of parapsychological research in greater social and cultural contexts. He traced how the hypothesis formed from critical debates that emerged among British psychical researchers at the turn of the twentieth century. The ideas advanced through the speculative philosophy of Charles Fort, the psychoanalytical and human potential approaches of Hereward Carrington and Nandor Fodor, and the making of parapsychology at Duke University through J.B. Rhine, J. Gaither Pratt, and William Roll. Roll became central to the making of the idea of "recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis" (RSPK). Pushing the boundaries of the RSPK hypothesis were case studies that blurred interpretative and experiential lines, including the work of George and Iris Owen to explore psychokinesis and the idea of conjuring up an invented spirit personality, the poltergeist experiencer Matthew Manning who became an energy healer, and Shirley Hitchings, whose 12-year experience with a poltergeist was dramatized in a BBC Radio documentary,The Battersea Poltergeist (2021).
Christopher conducted research at Rubenstein Library at Duke University of the Parapsychology Laboratory papers, along with the Society for Psychical Research archives at Cambridge University, and William Roll's papers at the University of West Georgia.
Most recently, Christopher has been contributing interdisciplinary humanities perspectives around research methodologies on anamalous phenomena and experiences, for example in collaborations with the scholar Rick Fehr, including a piece they co-wrote with Elorah Fangrad in Jack Hunter's anthology Greening the Paranormal (2019). He also did a study on an online community doing self-guided experiments with tulpamancy in Simone Natale and D.W. Pasulka's anthologyBelieving in Bits (2019). Starting in 2022, he has been applying humanities-centered perspectives, teaching a course on precognition for the Rhine Research Center.
Consult with Christopher's website for more on his academic work.