A Finnish anthropologist studying paranormal experiences found out the hard way that the country's academic world may not be ready for such research.
Dr. Marja-Liisa Honkasalo spent four years collecting stories of what she calls the 'uncanny' from everyday residents of Finland.
She described these events as instances where people hear voices or have visions as well as sensing an unseen presence and psi phenomena like precognition and telepathy.
Alongside a team of folkorists, psychiatrists, and historians among other experts, Honkasalo received more than 200 letters from people in the country who had experienced such 'uncanny' events.
Rather than try and determine what had happened to these experiencers, the team's goal was focused more on a cultural level with a focus on developing a better understanding of how these events impacted lives.
The group was also interested in finding out why mainstream science in Finland does not pay more attention to paranormal phenomena in general, which later proved to be cruelly ironic for Honkasalo.
Ultimately, they produced a book titled 'Mind and the Other' which detailed these experiences and offered some enlightening ideas as to why there is a reticence in Finland to look at them.
Among the reasons put forward are that numerous people reported being highly stigmatized due to reporting their experiences to medical doctors with some actually being diagnosed with psychological conditions or even institutionalized.
The authors attributed this to how Finland was one of the last Western countries to modernize and, as such, there is an underlying societal fear of being seen as 'backward' by believing in paranormal events or folkloric history.
Incredibly, the research project proved, in the end, to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy for Honkasalo.
Following the publication of 'Mind and the Other,' she was summoned to her supervisor's office at Finland's University of Turku and, rather than being congratulated for the thought-provoking work, the anthropologist was fired!
Although her paranormal research was not directly cited in her dismissal, Honksalo had little doubt that it was the reason, recounting the experience to Finnish media outlet yle in a riveting article, she chillingly mused, "I lost everything."
Fortunately, she has since found work at a different university in Finland where she plans to continue her study of the 'uncanny' with, presumably, the full backing of her bosses at the school.
Source: yle