Every culture around the world has their own set of beliefs when it comes to the paranormal. Some we may not have heard, some we may have heard or believe it ourselves! Here are the most popular paranormal beliefs around the world.
Existence of ancient advance civilizations
The most popular of all ancient advance civilizations that have captured the popular imagination is the lost city of Atlantis. In the Chapman University Survey of American Fears published in 2017, 55% of the surveyed population in the United States believed in the existence of Atlantis to some degree. In India, Lord Krishna’s kingdom, Dwarka supposedly sank under the ocean after it was shifted near the sea. Even the Great Pyramids and Sphinx have many paranormal stories attached to it about a more mystical past.
Places can be haunted by spirits
There is probably not one culture in the world that does not have a good story about ghosts and spirits. Popularity of the whole horror movie genre is the testament of the fact that a lot of people believe in ghosts and spirits. There are haunted houses, forests, places in all nook and corners of the world. They may or may not be dangerous but are always creepy. At least to the people who believe so. According to the same Chapman University study, 52% of the surveyed people agree or highly agree to the presence of spirits in certain haunted places. That percent will be even higher in Asian and African countries.
Aliens have visited Earth
Presence of life in some other planet in the galaxy is actually plausible. However when we talk about the probability of any extraterrestrial visiting earth, we enter the paranormal realm. Historical records are filled with instances of UFO sightings which could have been meteor showers, satellite or like in some recent cases, a highly classified aircraft. Early fantasy writers like Jules Verne gave these a scientific twist and started calling them alien spaceships. More than one third of the people believe that aliens have visited earth in the past and/or in the modern times.
Fortune tellers and psychics can foresee the future
This popular paranormal belief is the reason of existence of a multi-million dollar con industry around the world. In the Study of American Fears, almost 20% of the respondent agreed that they believed that a seer, a shaman or a physic can see your future. The number gets exponentially high in poorer and less educated countries.
Presence of Big Foot
This is not a mainstream paranormal belief with only about 15% of the respondents in the survey believed in the existence of Big Foot. But there are other similar charactersthat people believe in like “Yeti”in the Bhutan or “Khepa” in Arunachal Pradesh.Other than Big Foot, believe in the existence of other fantastical creatures like mermaids and Loch Ness Monster are quite popular in some places.
