By Tim Binnall
A pair of recent surveys timed for the Halloween season shed light on Americans' belief in a variety of paranormal phenomena, including ghosts, aliens, and Bigfoot. The first poll, which was reportedly commissioned by the company Phantom Wines, asked 2,000 people for their thoughts on different strange and unusual topics. Among the enlightening responses to the survey were that 57% of the participants expressed a belief in ghosts, while 39% said that they think Earth has been visited by aliens, and 27% posited that Sasquatch is real. On the subject of spirits, a remarkable 35% of the people surveyed said that they have felt an "unexplained presence" in their home that they suspect was ghostly in nature.
All told, 45% of the people participating in the survey said that they had some kind of personal encounter with suspected paranormal activity, be it ghosts, UFOs, or Bigfoot, while 23% of the respondents indicated that they do not believe in such high strangeness, but also expressed wariness about the topic out of fear that it could be real and wind up impacting their life somehow. Other areas covered by the survey included psychic phenomena, which 56% of the participants expressed belief in, and 29% of those individuals said that they had actually enlisted the help of a medium to try to communicate with the 'other side.'
Meanwhile, the website YouGov also conducted a survey of 1,000 Americans with an aim towards finding out their thoughts and experiences with regards to ghosts and "supernatural beings." This poll found that 41% of the participants expressed a belief in ghosts, while a nearly identical 43% indicated that they think demons are real. Werewolves and vampires did not fare nearly as well with the two 'monsters' receiving a mere 9% and 8% respectively. When it comes to having actually encountered a spirit, 20% of the people said that they believe that they have had such an experience, while 11% of the individuals said that they have had, unfortunately, met a demon at some point in their lives.