Paranormal News Roundup April 2012

I will be the first to admit that there is a ton of great paranormal news that doesn't make it on this site. Between everything going on in the world of hauntings, UFOs, cryptozoology, and parapsychology, it is sometimes too much to keep up with. However, I've done this in the past and I'm going to do it again for April 2012: the Paranormal News Roundup.

PARAPSYCHOLOGY IN PARANORMAL NEWS

Let's kick off the first bit of paranormal news with an interesting statistic: 20% of kids hear voices. A study was conducted in Ireland with 2,500 kids between 11 and 16 years old. For the 1/5 of kids that experienced auditory hallucinations, researchers concluded that most have a minor form of depression; for those with more extreme symptoms, ADD and clinical depression are most likely the cause. There was no mention of ghosts or aliens as the cause of these voices, which is to be expected in a scientific study. So while this isn't paranormal news in substance, I have no doubt that many paranormal researchers will be second-guessing these findings.

ALIENS IN PARANORMAL NEWS

A strange feature on the red planet brings us to our next notable mention of paranormal news. What looks like an exact rectangle monolith on the surface of mars has a lot of folks wondering. Paranormal enthusiasts believe it could be some sort of marker put there by extraterrestrials. Astronomers and scientists believe it is just a coincidentally shaped boulder. It does look oddly out-of-place, which is why I think it's strange enough to label as paranormal news:

HAUNTINGS IN PARANORMAL NEWS

Now for a bit of haunting-related paranormal news with a story about exorcism. In the city of Saskatoon, with the Canadian province Saskatchewan, a priest was called in to perform an exorcism on a middle-aged gentleman. The 'possessed' gentleman was shirtless and distraught, with the word "Hell" self-carved into his chest. When the priest arrived, this possessed used an odd voice stating, "He belongs to me. Get out of here." After a few blessings the man appeared to be back to normal. The priest also explained this was not an exorcism at all like is portrayed in the movies. Rather, he recited and performed basic blessings and prayers. Typically when exorcisms make it into a large newspaper's once-a-year paranormal news column, extreme violence is what lands the story in print. It's nice to see an exorcism with a positive conclusion getting attention.

You may have noticed the absence of UFO videos in this month's paranormal news roundup. So if you missed it, I already added an "April 2012 UFO Sightings" post with 3 of my favorite UFO videos from the month.

Credit: alienspress.blogspot.com