Discovery Lab Answers

Callum E. Cooper is a senior lecturer and associate professor of psychology at the University of Northampton, working at the intersection of parapsychology, thanatology, and bereavement psychology. The sources retrieved for this question cover two main research strands: experimental psi research (ganzfeld and remote viewing) and the phenomenology and therapeutic impact of after-death communication (ADC) experiences.

After-Death Communication Research

Phenomenology of ADC experiences

Cooper has been part of a collaborative research team — including Evelyn Elsaesser, Chris A. Roe, and David Lorimer — that has systematically characterized the sensory qualities of spontaneous ADC reports. One study analyzed visual, tactile, auditory, and olfactory perceptions drawn from a large survey dataset ^[6]. The data revealed a continuum from internally focused experiences (e.g., visualizing the deceased “in the mind’s eye”) to fully externalized perceptual events. Among respondents who reported a visual ADC, the survey captured details such as how the perceived figure disappeared — whether by fading, dissolving, or simply no longer being present after a blink — pointing to the heterogeneity of these reports rather than a single phenomenological type ^[6]. Notably, 24% of the full sample reported receiving information previously unknown to them, a finding the authors flag as relevant to hypotheses about information transfer ^[6]. The study design and data collection were carried out by Elsaesser, Roe, and Cooper at the University of Northampton, with Lorimer as advisor ^[6].

A related publication in Zeitschrift für Anomalistik (2022) by Elsaesser, Roe, Cooper, and Lorimer extended this work to a German-language audience, presenting both research findings and case studies on the phenomenology and impact of spontaneous after-death contacts ^[5].

ADC experiences in bereaved partners and spouses

A 2023 study by Penberthy, St Germain-Sehr, Grams, Burns, Lorimer, Cooper, Roe, Morrison, and Elsaesser examined ADC experiences specifically among widows and widowers ^[2]. The study analyzed survey data collected between February 2018 and January 2020 across multiple countries and languages (English, French, and Spanish). Key findings include:

• ADCs are reported by approximately 30–34% of individuals across societies ^[2].
• Spirituality — but not religiosity — changed significantly following an ADC experience: χ²(4, N = 70) = 32.55, p < .001 for spirituality; χ²(4, N = 70) = 14.78, p = .080 for religiosity ^[2].
• The authors note limitations: the dataset was not originally designed for this specific analysis, the subsample was small, and the data lacked questions tailored specifically to partners/spouses ^[2].

The ESP-Nexus spoke page on grief and bereavement notes that 61% of experiencers expressed a desire for continued contact with the deceased, suggesting these experiences fulfill psychological and spiritual needs — though the therapeutic effects on sadness and recovery trajectories varied across individuals.

Experimental Psi Research: Ganzfeld and Remote Viewing

Cooper has also contributed to experimental parapsychology, specifically investigating whether ganzfeld stimulation enhances performance on a precognitive remote viewing task relative to ordinary waking conditions. This work was conducted with Chris A. Roe and colleagues at the University of Northampton across a series of three experiments with 110 total participants in a counterbalanced repeated-measures design. The remote viewing paradigm used here asks participants to describe spatial or environmental information about a distant location — differing from classical forced-choice designs — while the sender actively engages with the target. The ESP-Nexus spoke page on this methodology notes that individual difference measures such as transliminality and openness to experience showed inconsistent relationships with task success across experiments, suggesting that phenomenological state during the task may be more predictive than stable personality traits.

The retrieved excerpts do not contain the specific effect sizes or hit rates from these ganzfeld/remote viewing experiments; for those figures, the Cooper: Ganzfeld and remote viewing methodology spoke page carries the fuller detail.

Skeptical critiques

What critics argue. The ADC survey research relies on self-selected, retrospectively reporting samples recruited through bereavement and ADC-interested networks, raising questions about sampling bias and the generalizability of prevalence estimates. The authors themselves acknowledge in ^[2] that the dataset was not designed for the specific analysis conducted, that the partner/spouse subsample was small, and that desired questions were absent — constraints they flag as limiting the depth of the findings.

What the experimental data show. The authors’ own reported limitations in ^[2] directly address these concerns: the small N, the secondary-analysis nature of the dataset, and the absence of tailored questions are identified as factors that could reduce depth and generalizability. The phenomenological study ^[6] draws on a larger survey but also relies on self-report and volunteer recruitment.

Analysis. The primary methodological questions the data themselves raise — sampling, retrospective self-report, secondary analysis — are ones the research team has openly documented rather than avoided. Independent replication of the specific therapeutic impact figures (e.g., the spirituality shift statistic) in differently recruited samples has not been reported in the sources retrieved for this question. The ganzfeld/remote viewing experiments use a counterbalanced repeated-measures design that addresses some individual-difference confounds, but the retrieved excerpts do not carry outcome statistics for direct evaluation of that line.

For a fuller picture of Cooper’s work, the Callum E. Cooper hub page and its spoke pages on grief and bereavement and ganzfeld and remote viewing methodology carry the site’s full curated synthesis on both strands.